Improving tourism policy implementation - The use of hybrid MCDM models

Few studies have presented a holistic approach to evaluating complex national tourism policies, successfully quantified the dynamics at play, or proposed an improvement model. The corresponding purpose of this study is to address this problem, using the method of hybrid MCDM (multiple criteria decision-making) to examine the dependent relationships among various dimensions and criteria of tourism policies and, ultimately, to suggest an optimal improvement plan for Taiwan tourism policy. A decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is employed to construct a network relationship map (NRM), which then is used to illustrate the influential network of the tourism policy improvement model. The DEMATEL-based analytic network process (DANP) and VIKOR are adopted to evaluate the weights and the gaps to the aspired level of implementation. The model is useful in identifying both an influential network and a priority sequence of dimensions/criteria related to tourism policies and, thus, is helpful to tourism policy management. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.