Identifying sustainable strategies for electronic waste management utilizing confidence-based group decision-making method in interval valued Fermatean fuzzy environment
Abstract
Global electronic waste (e-waste) management has become crucial due to the booming use of electronics and their harmful environmental and social impacts. This complexity arises from The involvement of various criteria and alternatives makes it complex and transforms it into a multi-attribute decision-making problem. This study introduces an innovative approach using Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA), Best Worst Method (BWM), and VIseKriterijumsko Optimizacijom I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) in interval-valued Fermatean fuzzy environment to assess the challenges and find effective strategies for e-waste management. Additionally, a confidence level-based aggregation operator is proposed within interval-valued Fermatean fuzzy environment. Furthermore, the confidence levels of decision-makers are expressed as interval-valued Fermatean fuzzy numbers to capture the fuzziness in the confidence levels. The attribute weights are evaluated using a newly integrated BWM and SWARA method. In BWM, attribute relevance is assessed using a 9 -point scale and non -linear equations, while SWARA, with its simpler iterative approach, employs a linguistic scale followed by pairwise comparison for attribute ranking. To identify the best strategy for sustainable e-waste management, VIKOR method employs a compromise measure to balance regret and utility measures. The research findings highlight the effectiveness of organizing the informal recycling sector and designing sustainable products as the top two strategies for e-waste management, with environmental and economic aspects playing pivotal roles. Moreover, the most significant criteria include harmful environmental impact, necessity for waste disposal, job creation potential, and investment costs. The effectiveness and stability of the proposed method are validated through extensive comparative and sensitivity analyses. Overall, the proposed method in the interval-valued Fermatean fuzzy setting ensures a structured and transparent decision-making process, facilitating effective stakeholder collaboration and promoting responsible e-waste management practices.
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