Evaluation of the environmental sustainability performance of Eastern European countries with integrated MCDM methods

Abstract

Especially in recent years, the environmental problems of countries have been increasing due to the acceleration of industrialization, increasing population, continuous increase in the consumption and energy requirements of the society and the development of technology. In order to eliminate these problems, countries take many measures and precautions. This study aims to compare Eastern European countries by evaluating their positions in the environmental sustainability performance index (EPI). For this purpose, the importance levels of the criteria were found with ENTROPY, which is in the objective category of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and then the ranking of the countries in the environmental sustainability performance index was determined with Complex Proportional Assessmnet (COPRAS) and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) methods. The data used in the evaluation of the environmental sustainability performance index “The 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI)” ranking of Eastern European countries is the data prepared by Yale University and obtained from the relevant web address. According to the results obtained, the ranking of the criteria in terms of their importance levels were ranked as water resources, waste management and agriculture, and the rankings obtained according to COPRAS and WASPAS methods differed in the environmental sustainability performance ranking of the countries, and it was determined that the WASPAS method gave more consistent results.