A multi-criteria decision-making approach for quantification of accessibility to market facilities in rural areas: an application in Bangladesh

The available approaches for measuring accessibility are rigid and complex in nature, and mostly impractical for decision-makers as they require a large number of data, logistics support, and technical knowledge. Therefore, this study seeks to propose a flexible and practical approach for quantifying and ranking the accessibility to market facilities in rural areas. A three-stage multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is proposed to fulfill the objective. The first stage involves the identification of factors that influence the accessibility to rural market facilities. The next stage involves the use of the Constant-Sum Paired-Comparison Method (CSPCM) to determine the priority of each identified factor. The third stage adopts the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to quantify and rank the accessibility to market facilities of rural areas. To illustrate a real-world application, accessibility to market facilities in ten sub-districts of Bangladesh have been quantified and ranked by using this proposed approach. Results of this application support the claim that MCDM approach is a practical, flexible, and reliable approach that would better assist the policy-makers to identify poor accessible rural areas.