Evaluating the Sustainability of Community-Based Long-Term Care Programmes: A Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

Baoan Song, Qiyu Sun, Ying Li and Chuanqi Que
Additional contact information
Baoan Song: School of Philosophy and Society, Jilin University, Chang Chun 130012, China
Qiyu Sun: School of Philosophy and Society, Jilin University, Chang Chun 130012, China
Ying Li: School of Social Work, University of Michigan, 1080 S. University, Room B660, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106, USA
Chuanqi Que: School of Philosophy and Society, Jilin University, Chang Chun 130012, China

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: Sustainability is a crucial factor in Long-Term Care (LTC) programmes, which implies whether the programmes have the capability of sustaining a quality service over the long term. To evaluate the sustainability of community-based LTC programmes, a novel hybrid framework has been demonstrated with a mixed Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique. According to extensive literature review and the fuzzy Delphi method, four pillars of initial criteria and twelve sub-criteria have been determined. Then a weighted hierarchy has been constructed with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to constitute the evaluation index system. In order to prove our framework, a case study of four community-based LTC programmes in Michigan is presented by applying the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. The results indicate that programme P2 has the best potential of sustainability, and sub-criteria associated with economy outweigh other sub-criteria. The sensitivity analysis verifies that the result of the ranking remains stable regardless of the fluctuation in sub-criteria weights, which proves the evaluation results and proposed model to be accurate and effective. This study develops a comprehensive and effective framework for evaluating community-based LTC programmes from the sustainability perspective.

Keywords: Community-Based LTC programmes; sustainability evaluation; hybrid MCDM; fuzzy Delphi; AHP; fuzzy TOPSIS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/657/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/657/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:7:p:657-:d:73800

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().