Application of fuzzy AHP for determining the most importance affecting factors on pistachio exports

Determining the most important affecting factors on pistachio exports is an essential and crucial process. It helps decision makers to focus on factors that have the highest weight and find the best policy to increase the export rate. These factors include: quality, packing, promotion, eliminating limitations, etc., all of which are subjective. In other words, the problem can be analyzed in the form of multi-criteria decision making. The traditional AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is an appropriate method for these situations. Human judgment about the importance of the factors is often imprecise and vague. To make up for this deficiency in the AHP, a fuzzy AHP is used. In this method, triangular fuzzy numbers are used for the pairwise comparison of a fuzzy AHP. Using the extent analysis method and the principle for the comparison of fuzzy numbers, decision makers can provide the weight vectors.