Environmentally responsible freight transport service providers' assessment under data-driven information uncertainty

Purpose Freight transportation practices accounted for a significant share of environmental degradation and climate change over the years. Therefore, environmentally responsible transport practices (ERTPs) become a serious concern of freight shippers and transport service providers. Past studies generally ignored the assessment of ERTPs of freight transport companies during a transport service contract. To bridge the above literature gap, this paper proposed a hierarchical framework for evaluating freight transport companies based on ERTPs. Design/methodology/approach In a data-driven decision-making environment, transport firm selection is affected by multiple expert inputs, lack of information availability, decision-making ambiguity and background of experts. The evaluation of such decisions requires a multi-criteria decision-making method under a group decision-making approach. This paper used a data-driven method based on the intuitionistic fuzzy-set-based analytic hierarchy process (IF-AHP) and VIseKriterijumska Kompromisno Rangiranje (IF-VIKOR) method. The applicability of the proposed framework is validated with the Indian freight transport industry. Findings The result analysis shows that environmental knowledge sharing among freight transport actors, quality of organizations human resource, collaborative green awareness training programs, promoting environmental awareness program for employees and compliance of government transport emission law and practice have been ranked top five ERTPs which significantly contribute to the environmental sustainability of freight transport industry. The proposed framework also ranked freight transport companies based on ERTPs. Research limitations/implications This research is expected to provide a reference to develop ERTPs in the emerging economies freight transport industry and contribute to the development of a sustainable freight transport system. Originality/value This study assesses the environmental responsibility of the freight transportation industry. The emerging economies logistics planners can use proposed framework for assessing the performance of freight transportation companies based on ERTPs.

Automated summary

This study proposes a hierarchical framework for assessing freight transport companies based on environmentally responsible transport practices (ERTPs), focusing on areas such as environmental knowledge sharing, quality of human resource, collaborative green awareness training programs, promoting environmental awareness program for employees, and compliance of government transport emission law and practice. The analysis shows that these ERTPs significantly contribute to the environmental sustainability of the freight transport industry, and the proposed framework can be used for assessing the performance of freight transportation companies based on ERTPs.