Hybrid multiple criteria decision-making methods: a review of applications for sustainability issues

Abstract

Formal decision-making methods can be used to help improve the overall sustainability of industries and organisations. Recently, there has been a great proliferation of works aggregating sustainability criteria by using diverse multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. A number of review papers summarising these techniques have been published. During the past few years, new approaches for hybrid MCDM (HMCDM) methods have been developed, but they have not yet been completely reviewed. This article aims to fill this gap and to summarise publications related to the application of HMCDM. The current study is limited solely to papers available in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection database. The main findings report that HMCDM methods have been increasingly applied for supporting decisions in different domains of sustainability. The most frequently used methods emphasise the advantages of hybrid approaches over individual methods, and we conclude that they can assist decision-makers in handling information such as stakeholders’ preferences, interconnected or contradictory criteria, and uncertain environments. The main contribution of this work is identifying hybrid approaches as improvements for decision-making related to sustainability issues, while also promoting future application of the approaches.