Abstract
Environmentally sustainable development is a multidimensional concept that emphasizes the integration of economy, society and environment within a region and the realization of dynamic balance. How to objectively environmentally sustainable development has been a major concern for scholars and policy makers. To address this problem effectively, we first obtain the indicators of environmentally sustainable development based on the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework. Then, we introduce variable weight factors in the traditional analytic hierarchy process (AHP), so that the weights assigned by experts to sustainable development indicators can change with time or space. In this way, we propose a new and improved weight distribution method called variable weigh analytic hierarchy process. Finally, we employ indicators of environmentally sustainable development based on PSR and variable weigh analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the sustainable development of cities in a case country. Our study found that: (1) indicators of environmentally sustainable development should consist of three parts: pressure indicators of environmentally sustainable development, state indicators of environmentally sustainable development, and response indicators of sustainable development; (2) with the variable weigh analytic hierarchy process, our ranking hierarchy process can handle dynamic changes among indicators better than the traditional AHP method and better reflect the true states of indicators.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
The analytic hierarchy process based on variable weigh method can effectively cope with the fixed weight of traditional AHP
Sustainable development refers to the coordinated development of economy, society, resources, and environmental protection which are all involved in the same inseparable system
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Using the indicators of environmentally sustainable development based on PSR and the variable weigh analytic hierarchy process constructed in this article, we conducted an urban environmentally sustainable development evaluation on the case country, i.e., China. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) Using PSR theory to construct an indicator system for environmental sustainability to provide a basis for scholars’ follow-up research; (2) Introducing some variable weight factors into the AHP model to construct a variable weigh analytic hierarchy process to make The factor weight changes with the factor value, which makes up for the relatively fixed defect of the factor weight of the AHP model; (3) These methods are applied to the case to verify the feasibility of the method. Through the analysis and calculation of constant weights and variable weights, we draw conclusions on environmentally sustainable development
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