Uses and Misuses of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in Environmental Decision Making

Katie Steele, Yohay Carmel, Jean Cross and Chris Wilcox

Risk Analysis, 2009, vol. 29, issue 1, 26-33

Abstract: We focus on a class of multicriteria methods that are commonly used in environmental decision making—those that employ the weighted linear average algorithm (and this includes the popular analytic hierarchy process (AHP)). While we do not doubt the potential benefits of using formal decision methods of this type, we draw attention to the consequences of not using them well. In particular, we highlight a property of these methods that should not be overlooked when they are applied in environmental and wider decision‐making contexts: the final decision or ranking of options is dependent on the choice of performance scoring scales for the criteria when the criteria weights are held constant. We compare this “sensitivity” to a well‐known criticism of the AHP, and we go on to describe the more general lesson when it comes to using weighted linear average methods—a lesson concerning the relationship between criteria weights and performance scoring scales.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01130.x

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:wly:riskan:v:29:y:2009:i:1:p:26-33

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().