Green Supplier Selection Using IMF SWARA and Fuzzy WASPAS Techniques for the Supply of Agricultural Pesticides

Abstract

With the impact of global climate change and other environmental factors, concerns about sustainable agriculture and access to sufficient and reliable food are increasing. Reports of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other international organizations also confirm this. For this reason, awareness has been created all over the world regarding the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).With the increasing awareness of environmental protection worldwide, green supply chain management (GSCM) has become an important issue for businesses to achieve environmental sustainability. Nowadays, many managers and business owners pay special attention to green supplier selection to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, green supplier selection remains a critical decision for businesses. Businesses need to consider many economic and environmental criteria in the decision process to select the most suitable supplier. The aim of this study is to select the most suitable green supplier for the supply of pesticides. For this purpose, firstly, the importance levels of the criteria were found with IMF SWARA (Improved Fuzzy Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis), one of the multi-criteria decision making methods (MCDM), and then the selection of the most suitable green supplier was made with the fuzzy WASPAS (Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment) method. The decision-making group in selecting the most suitable green supplier for the supply of agricultural pesticides was composed of agricultural enterprise managers using pesticides and academicians who are experts in the relevant field. Fuzzy numbers was used to represent the decision makers' decision in linguistic expression. In line with the results obtained, the ranking of the criteria according to their importance levels was determined as cost, quality and green product. In the ranking of the alternatives, alternative 1 ranked first with the highest value. This research proposes a framework to determine the most suitable alternative for green supplier selection through a combined approach of fuzzy multi-criteria decision making involving relevant stakeholders.