Financial Performance Evaluation of Forest Village Cooperatives: A Multi-Criteria Topsis Approach

Abstract

Forest villagers constitute the poorest of the society in underdeveloped and developing countries. Efforts for the rural development of forest villages are important for combating poverty, regulating the relationship with forest villagers, and ensuring sustainable management of forests, since rural people subsist on forest lands. As the most important method of executing an organized movement in such settlement areas, cooperatives represent one of the most crucial actors in rural development. However, it seems that cooperatives cannot provide adequate contribution to the rural development in Turkey. This research analyses the fi nancial performance of the cooperatives operating in the forest villages located within the boundaries of Bucak and Sutculer forest districts, where forestry activities are carried out intensively in Turkey. This study uses the TOPSIS method, which is a multi-criteria decision-making method. The results of the study revealed that the fi nancial performances of all of the cooperatives were low during the years when they were analysed. The most important reasons for low fi nancial performance include the fact that: (i) the cooperatives mainly operated in the fi eld of wood production and the business volume in that fi eld was inadequate, (ii) their capital was insuffi cient since the members assumed a lower share, (iii) they had challenges accessing constant funds for investment, (iv) the state subsidies decreased, (v) the number of members was low, and (vi) they were unable to compete with large companies.

Multiple Criteria Decision Making for the Achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Systematic Literature Review and a Research Agenda

“…As depicted in Table 15, four studies employed compromise methods, as follows (i) COPRAS [153], (ii) TOPSIS [154,157], (iii) SAW and IFPPSI [154], and (iv) IOWA [161]. The remaining studies applied outranking methods (PROMETHEE and ELECTRE [154,161] and the multi-objective ZOGP [159] For the achievement of SDGs belonging to this category, several applications of MCDM methods reported in 36 studies are presented and discussed here, as follows: SDG 6-"Clean Water and Sanitation" [162][163][164][165][166][167][168], SDG 13-"Climate Action" [169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182], SDG 14-"Life below Water" [183][184][185][186][187][188], and SDG 15-"Life on Land" [189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197].…”

“…As shown in Table 18, the combination of MCDM methods with non-MCDM methods (Delphi technique, SWOT analysis, Genetic Algorithm, and Geographical Information Systems) was adopted by most of the reviewed articles [183][184][185][186] 19 presents the reviewed articles' findings that addressed issues associated with SDG 15 [189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197].…”

“…By way of illustration, Ahmadi Sani et al [189] adopted an AHP-GIS approach to rank alternative land uses in Zagros (Iran) to improve the management of vulnerable ecosystems and prevent further degradation and increasing sustainability of land use in that region. The remaining studies [190,192,194,197] used single MCDM methods (GP, AHP, and TOSPSIS) for different purposes. Diaz-Balteiro et al [190] used a multi-objective method (Goal Programming) to rank industrial forest plantations in Northwestern Spain, from the perspective of sustainability, while Tecle and Verdin [192] employed a utility-based MCDM approach and sensitivity analysis to determine the most efficient way of allocating a budget for multi-purpose forest management in Durango (Mexico).…”

“…In summary, five studies used a utility-based method (AHP), combined or not with non-MCDM methods [189,192,193,196,197], while two applied compromise methods (S-TOPSIS and TOPSIS) [191,194] and the remaining employed a multi-objective method (Goal Programming) and an outranking method (PROMETHEE) [190,195] respectively.…”

Study on the risk level of food production enterprise based on TOPSIS method

“…A MADM problem with m options is viewed by TOPSIS as a geometric system with m points in the next n space. The method is based on the idea that the alternative should be the closest to the positive-ideal solution and the furthest from the negative-ideal solution (Korkmaz & Gurer, 2018;Silva et al, 2018). TOPSIS uses the terms "similarity with a positive-ideal solution" and "avoidance of a negative-ideal solution" to describe an indicator.…”