Evaluation of OECD Countries with Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods in terms of Economic, Social and Environmental Aspects

Abstract

Exhausted natural resources and deteriorating ecological balance, together with the social privileges that people expect to have, are proof that the development of countries cannot be reduced to economic development alone. In this respect, this study aimed to evaluate the economic, social and environmental aspects of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Within this scope, the countries were firstly divided into two groups by performing cluster analysis in order to create more homogeneous country groups. Then, 12 criteria, consisting of four economic, four social and four environmental criteria, were determined by considering the literature and expert opinions. The criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) method was used to weight the determined criteria and using the calculated criterion weights, the countries in each cluster were then evaluated with the measurement of alternatives and ranking according to compromise solution (MARCOS) method. As a result, the most successful countries in the first cluster were determined as Switzerland, Denmark and Ireland with 68.8%, 62.7% and 62.5% performance scores, respectively. Whereas, the most unsuccessful countries were USA, Canada and Australia with 49.8%, 50.0% and 50.1% performance scores, respectively. The most successful countries in the second cluster were found as Slovenia, Spain and Portugal with 65.9%, 65.5% and 64.5% performance scores, while the most unsuccessful countries were Turkey, Chile and Colombia with 45.9%, 55.4% and 55.9% performance scores, respectively. Finally, in order to test the sensitivity of the MARCOS method, the solution was repeated with the MAIRCA, WASPAS, MABAC and CoCoSo methods using the weights obtained by the CRITIC method. A high correlation (greater than 80%) was found between the rankings acquired using the other methods and the rankings obtained by the MARCOS method.