A Model for Measuring Agricultural Sustainability Using Fuzzy Composite Indicators (Case Study: Kerman Province)

The present study has tried to help the development of the branch of sustainability science by improving the characteristics of composite indicators, by proposing a new methodology for constructing sustainability composite indicators. In order to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed method in practice, its application has been presented for assessing agricultural sustainability levels in southeastern Iran (Kerman province). For this purpose, the base indicators in three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) for the selected counties of the province were selected based on the literature review and comments of a panel of 15 academic experts and calculated using the data and information mainly collected from the Public Agricultural Census of 2014 and the Statistical Yearbook of 2015 in Kerman province and then normalized. Then, using the Fuzzy Pairwise Comparisons, social preferences for the relative importance of the indicators, based on the questionnaires designed for this purpose and completed by the panel, were introduced into the aggregating functions as weights. The outcomes of this methodology were economic, social, environmental and total sustainability composite indicators for each of the counties, using which the studied counties were ranked based on the relative levels of sustainability. Also, the sustainability of the area was determined in each of the three dimensions and in an overall manner. The results of the study indicate that the proposed method is able to enhance some of the features of the composite indicators in the sustainability assessment process and to support agricultural policy decisions, as a practical tool.