Full consistency method (FUCOM) and weighted sum under fuzzy information for evaluating the sustainability of farm tourism sites

• Published in: Soft computing (Berlin, Germany) Germany), 2022-11, Vol.26 (22), p.12481-12508
• Main Author: Ocampo, Lanndon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Application of Soft Computing; Artificial Intelligence; Computational Intelligence; Control; Engineering; Mathematical Logic and Foundations; Mechatronics; Robotics
• ISSN: 1432-7643; 1433-7479
• DOI: 10.1007/s00500-022-07184-8

Farm tourism is an emerging agenda within the rural tourism literature due to its potential in diversifying income on farms. Despite such potential, issues associated with sustainability became a direct consequence of its growth. However, developing an overarching sustainability evaluation framework is scarce in the domain literature, with an exemption from a recently reported work proposing fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to generate a composite performance score. This work augments the previous computational framework by reducing the mental workload of stakeholders and decision-makers in eliciting judgments required in the evaluation process. It integrates the fuzzy full consistency method (FUCOM) and fuzzy weighted sum method (WSM) into a holistic platform that assigns an aggregate sustainability performance of farm tourism sites. The fuzzy FUCOM assigns the priority weights of sustainable tourism indicators, while the fuzzy WSM generates the composite score. Integrating fuzzy set theory in the evaluation platform addresses the vagueness and uncertainty in the decision-making process. Five farm tourism sites in the Philippines are evaluated to demonstrate the proposed methodology. Findings show that the indicators associated with capability training of local tourism personnel, employment opportunities for the locals, development of an integrated tourism and development plan, and curbing waste generation are deemed the most crucial sustainability indicators. The application of the proposed framework generates the composite sustainability indices for all sites, which can be used for comparing various sites’ performance, identifying hotspots, and benchmarking for best practices. Policy insights for these findings are discussed. Finally, a comparative analysis shows that the proposed method is comparable to other time-consuming MCDM methods.