SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS BY ENTROPY-BASED COPRAS METHOD: AN APPLICATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES

Abstract

This study aims to examine the sustainable development performance of European Union countries for the years 2018, 2019, and 2020 by the Entropy-based COPRAS Method, one of the hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. The weights of the criteria has been calculated by the entropy method. The performances of countries have been measured via the COPRAS Method. Some selected sustainable development indicators, which are available for all the European Union countries, have been used. The most important criterion by the Entropy Method is the Net Greenhouse Gas Emissions for all years studied. Sweden has the best sustainable development performance by the COPRAS Method in all the years studied. Croatia was the country with the worst performance in 2018 and 2019, but Malta is in 2020. Some policy recommendations to increase sustainable development performance have been presented at the end of the study It should be noted that these findings do not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship among the variables. When criteria and years change, the ranking may also change. In order to explore why some countries perform better than others, some new studies using econometric methods can be implemented.