A Combined Evaluation Method of Corporate Social Responsibility Based on the Difference and Similarity: A Case Study of Transportation Industry in China

Abstract

Currently, it is becoming more essential for a company to operate in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner. This study aims to evaluate corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China’s transportation industry by applying indicator weighting approaches. This study evaluated 68 transportation companies with 82 associated CSR indicators. Firstly, this paper established an indicator system, including seven criteria layers that conform to the characteristics of the Chinese transportation industry. Secondly, by integrating the G1 method, standard deviation method and CRITIC (criteria importance though intercriteria correlation) approach, a combined weighting method, CWMDS (combined weighting method based on the combination of difference and similarity), was constructed, which embodies the two goals of “horizontal similarity and vertical difference”. The experimental results show that CWMDS achieves better results in many aspects. The empirical results show that the air transportation subindustry was the best in CSR performance while the high-speed transportation subindustry was the worst. Finally, this paper put forward some policy suggestions to promote China’s transportation enterprises to fulfill their social responsibility.