Evaluation of provinces in Turkey in term of life indices with spherical fuzzy decision making approach

The concept of well-being measurement is an important phenomenon in the evaluation of life. By measuring well-being, a scale is created to evaluate the development of individuals and societies. At first, increasing well-being was associated only with economic growth. Changing world conditions have helped to the development of multidimensional studies by taking into account the meeting the basic needs of the natural environment and individuals as well as economic growth. Multidimensional assessment studies have gained momentum with the emergence of the concept of sustainable development. With this concept, life has started to be evaluated in social, economic and environmental dimensions through national and international studies. Within the scope of international studies, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) developed a comprehensive index called Better Life Index (BLI) in 2011. In Turkey, within the scope of national studies, TurkStat performed a life index study in provinces consisting of 11 dimensions and 41 indicators in 2015. In the life index study, dimensions and indicators were weighted equally hierarchically, the general index was obtained and provinces were ranked. In this study, it is aimed to determine the criteria importance weights by considering 11 dimensions in the life index data as criteria and to rank the provinces in terms of life indices. The criteria were grouped and evaluated in terms of social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. A five-member expert team consisting of people from different professional groups was formed for the evaluation. Criteria weights were obtained by evaluations using the Spherical Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (SF-AHP) method. In the evaluations regarding the criteria, it was seen that the social dimension is more important than the economic and environmental dimensions. In the social dimension, it has been seen that the criterion of education is more important than the other criteria, and in the economic dimension, the criterion of income and wealth is more important than the criterion of working life. Using the criteria weights, the provinces were ranked using CoCoSo and TOPSIS methods. According to the CoCoSo method, Isparta took the first place. In the TOPSIS method, İstanbul was the first province. Finally, the flexibility of the final ranking was evaluated by sensitivity analysis.