A multi-criteria decision-making approach to help resource-exhausted areas choose suitable transformation templates—The example of Wansheng in Chongqing, China

Abstract

China and other major economies of the world have invested considerable resources to assist resource-exhausted areas in their development. But few regions have improved the stagnant state of development. The literature suggests that the lack of assistance provided to decision-makers when choosing suitable transformation templates often results in the selection of poor templates that are not suitable for a given region. This is an important factor that contributes to the difficulties among resource-exhausted areas to achieve transformation. This paper describes an application of hybrid Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique for the selection of optimum template for the resource-exhausted region. The proposed model, Fuzzy Analytical Network Process (Fuzzy-ANP) is integrated with Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (Fuzzy-DEMATEL) to evaluate the research object and candidate templates. Evaluation is based on problems (criteria) including the developing new industries, improving governance capabilities, enhancing the ability to attract production, reducing unemployment, restoring an ecological environment and transformation the original resource-mining industry. Fuzzy-ANP and Fuzzy-DEMATEL are used to determine the priority of these criteria for the research region and for candidate template regions from two viewpoints: the importance of each issue, and the ability of each issue to influence other issues. This paper selects Wangsheng as research region and Ruhr, Chikuho, Lorraine and Houston as templates. The obtain preference order of the templates for Fuzzy-ANP and Fuzzy-DEMATEL are Houston > Lorraine > Chikuho > Ruhr and Ruhr > Chikuho > Houston > Lorraine respectively. Combining two results, the order of the templates is Chkuho > Lorranie > Houston > Ruhr. Chikuho is selected as template for Wansheng transformation.