Causality and Importance of Sustainable Forestry Goals: Strategic and Tactical Assessment by DEMATEL and AHP

Abstract

This paper presents the combined use of standard DEMATEL and AHP methodologies in assessing a selected set of criteria for evaluating sustainable forestry goals. Creating a decision-making framework with two participating individuals (the authors of this research) enabled the comparison of individually obtained solutions with the aggregated solutions derived by two methodologies. The use of DEMATEL enabled strategic viewing of the causality relations among criteria and a limited indication of cardinal information (weights) about their importance. Different from DEMATEL, the use of AHP is considered a control mechanism in tactical decision-making situations such as the usage of standard multi-criteria methods for solving forestry-related allocation or selection problems. AHP’s role is to derive weights of criteria in a very structured environment based on assumption that criteria are independent and only their mutual importance is relevant for further decision-making. Individual solutions and aggregation schemes for creating group solutions are compared for both methodologies. Critical analysis is given for different aspects of their combined use when treating causalities and the importance of criteria in evaluations of long-term sustainable forestry goals.