Selection of a transport investment project based on sustainability index, return on investment and risk

Abstract

Nowadays sustainability, sustainable development and clean environment became important and relevant topic across the world. Sustainability issues have gained particular attention in a transport sector.This sector creates a significant impact on environment, social relationships and economic development. Thus, the sustainability integration in investment projects of a transport sector is inevitable in order to make a positive environmental impact.This paper presents the development of sustainability index for a transport investment project and selection of a transport investment project taking return on investment, risk and sustainability into considerations.Therefore, the novelty of this work lies in constructing a transport sustainability index (TSI) relying on an additional sustainability aspect, i.e., technological dimension. The technological inclusion is particularly important today as it allows for developing new technologies, which, in turn, are able to reduce the impact on climate change, replace natural gas by renewable energy sources, enhancing resource efficiency, bringing a competitive advantage in the market and improving living standards. The index was compiled and the selection of a project was done by applying multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM), such as an expert survey, assessment of the compatibility and reliability of group opinions, subjective weighting, the reference value method, simple additive weighting (SAW) and technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS). The results of this study revealed that 14 sustainability criteria (5 environmental, 3 economic, 3 social and 3 technological) weighted by experts formed the basis of a transport project sustainability index. The developed sustainability index could be useful in assessing and comparing projects of a transport sector. Moreover, a transport sustainability index may be useful in making decisions regarding project selection. When addressing the issue of a project selection, the decision-maker could take into account not only the project’s return and risk, but also its sustainability.In addition, this research revealed that there is a statistically significant, strong linear correlation between sustainability and project return.