A sensitivity analysis of composite indicators: Min/max thresholds

IF 5.4 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Adél Kelemen , Zsuzsanna Katalin Szabó , Sándor Bozóki , Zsombor Szádoczki , Áron Dénes Hartvig
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The aim of composite indicators is to express the overall performance of countries/regions with respect to a complex goal including sustainability, competitiveness, and innovation. Some of the indices play an important role in real governmental and strategic decisions on allocating sources. Sensitivity analyses usually include the changes in weights (of importance), the evaluations with respect to the criteria and the aggregating functions. In contrast, we investigate the effect of setting the minimal and maximal thresholds of the scoring functions used in the assessment. Thus, only the effect of this transformation is investigated, while the input data and criteria weights are not modified or stochastic. It is demonstrated that even such a seemingly innocent modification of the min/max thresholds might lead to remarkable changes in the ranking. Results are presented in detail on the examples of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). However, the phenomenon is general: further 15 composite indices, applying the min/max threshold, have also been collected. The choice of min/max threshold is functionating as an implicit (re-)weighting of the criteria: criteria with smaller min/max ranges are overweighted. Thus, the steps of weighting and assessment are not independent. This research provides an alternative sensitivity analysis to test the robustness of the rankings.

综合指标的敏感性分析:最小/最大阈值
综合指标的目的是表达国家/地区在可持续发展、竞争力和创新等复杂目标方面的总体表现。有些指标在政府实际决策和分配资源的战略决策中发挥着重要作用。敏感性分析通常包括权重(重要性)的变化、与标准有关的评估以及汇总函数。相比之下,我们研究的是设定评估中使用的评分函数的最小和最大阈值的影响。因此,我们只研究了这种转换的效果,而输入数据和标准权重并没有被修改或随机化。结果表明,即使对最小/最大阈值进行这种看似无害的修改,也可能导致排名发生显著变化。研究结果以环境绩效指数(EPI)和数字经济与社会指数(DESI)为例进行了详细介绍。然而,这种现象是普遍的:我们还收集了 15 个采用最小/最大阈值的综合指数。最低/最高阈值的选择可以说是对标准的隐性(重新)加权:最低/最高范围较小的标准被加权。因此,加权和评估步骤并不是独立的。本研究提供了另一种敏感性分析,以测试排名的稳健性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Environmental and Sustainability Indicators
Environmental and Sustainability Indicators Environmental Science-Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
CiteScore
7.80
自引率
2.30%
发文量
49
审稿时长
57 days
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