OECD Ülkelerinin Ekolojik Ayak İzinin Entropi-Topsis Yöntemi ile Analizi
Analysis of Ecological Footprint of OECD Countries with Entropi-Topsis Method

Summary/Abstract: The ecological footprint is an important indicator that measures how individuals, communities, and countries use natural resources and their environmental impacts. This concept aims to raise awareness of sustainability by assessing the impact of human activities on the ecosystem. The analysis of the ecological footprint highlights the importance of maintaining environmental balance by revealing the amount of natural resources consumed and the impact of this consumption on the ecosystem. Countries' policies and approaches in areas such as reducing carbon emissions, using renewable energy, implementing sustainable agricultural practices, preserving biodiversity, and managing waste play a critical role in reducing the ecological footprint. In this context, reducing the ecological footprint has become a necessity both for ensuring the efficient and sustainable use of natural resources and for maintaining environmental balance in the long term. At the same time, adopting conscious approaches to consumption habits will significantly contribute to reducing the ecological footprint. In the study, the weights and performance rankings of the ecological footprint components of OECD countries were determined; accordingly, the ecological footprint levels of the countries were evaluated and comparatively analyzed. The ecological footprint data for OECD countries from 2010 to 2022 has been collected from the Global Footprint Network. In the study, the criterion weights were first determined using the Entropy method, and then the performance ranking of the alternatives was conducted using the TOPSIS method. The analysis revealed that the highest criterion is carbon, while the lowest criterion is built-up land. In the performance ranking, the top country was found to be the United States, while the last country was Germany. In the final section, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis was conducted to test the robustness of the model and to demonstrate the impact of different criterion weights on the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) results. Through sensitivity analysis, 40 different scenarios were created by reducing the weight coefficient of the most important criterion by 1% in each scenario. The obtained scenarios were re-evaluated using the TOPSIS method, and accordingly, the performance scores and rankings of the countries were determined. As a result of the analysis, minor changes were observed in the rankings of some OECD countries. Such variations are significant in terms of the validity and reliability of the initial ranking. Additionally, it was observed that there were not many changes in the performance rankings of countries other than Australia, Japan, and Poland during the years 2010-2022. During these thirteen years, minor variations were observed in the weights of criteria other than the carbon and built-up land criteria.

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