A Fuzzy OPARA-Based Group Decision-Making Approach: Application to Sustainable Solutions Assessment

Sustainable practices are essential for long-term societal development, minimizing environmental impacts while promoting the efficient use of resources. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches can play a vital role in assessing and prioritizing sustainability solutions by considering diverse economic, social, and environmental factors. This study proposes a multi-criteria group decision-making approach based on the Objective Pairwise Adjusted Ratio Analysis (OPARA) method in a fuzzy environment and presents its application for the assessment of sustainable agriculture solutions. In the proposed approach, the evaluation criteria weights are determined by combining subjective weights from experts and objective weights obtained from the MEREC (Method Based on the Removal Effects of Criteria) method. The Relative Preference Relation (RPR) approach is employed for ranking fuzzy numbers and final evaluation. Sensitivity analysis and comparison with other methods are conducted to assess the robustness and validity of the proposed approach. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in evaluating solutions. Based on the final evaluation from the case study, the most important criteria are “Availability and quality of water”, “Focus on immediate economic returns”, and “Financial incentives and access to credit”, while the most suitable solutions for advancing sustainable agriculture are “Financial and credit support”, “Education and enhancement of farmers’ knowledge”, and “Enhancement of research and development”.