A Hybrid DEMATEL-EDAS Based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for A Social Aid Distribution Problem

Abstract

The office of social affairs has been helping poor or marginalized families through social aid in dealing with poverty. This social aid emphasizes decreasing the poverty rate and economic recovery affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the selection process in the previous year evaluated many families as aid recipient candidates through a conventional process selected by an officer. It would be vulnerable to subjectivity in assessment. Therefore, we attempted to develop a hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methodology to apply it to this particular decision-making process. This methodology amalgamated the DEMATEL method and the EDAS method with different tasks. Firstly, the DEMATEL method decided the feasible criteria weights automatically based on the proficient decision-maker assessment in estimating a pairwise criteria comparison. Secondly, the EDAS applied the criteria weight values to determine alternatives rank order based on the value of the appraisal score. After comparing with the VIKOR method, the hybrid DEMATEL-EDAS method demonstrated the stability and capability in dealing with the different influence parameters on the final results.