Land evaluation for ecotourism development—an integrated approach based on FUZZY, WLC, and ANP methods

Identification of capacities for development of ecotourism is an undeniable priority in any country. For this purpose, various methods have been proposed by different researchers for locating regions with a potential for the development of ecotourism. These regions have different strong and weak points depending on the regional conditions. Evidently, the use of quantitative methods and reduced expert involvement in the process of decision-making and evaluation can yield better results. Therefore, in this research, a multi-criteria evaluation method based on fuzzy logic and network analysis process (ANP) has been used for the evaluation of the development of ecotourism. Therefore, one of the semi-northern regions of the country—Taleghan county, Alborz province—which has different capacities regarding ecotourism was chosen and investigated. Ecological and socio-economic criteria and indices were first identified and then quantified by fuzzy method, after which they were normalized. Further, the weight of factors was determined by the ANP method. Thereafter, using weight linear combination (WLC) operator, all the layers were combined and the region’s potential for ecotourism was zoned. The outcomes show that out of the entire area, 75.2% has different abilities for ecotourism development, while the remaining area lacks any special ability. Further, the results of the research indicate that the concurrent use of fuzzy logic and ANP method in determining the priority and weight of criteria provides more logical and flexible conditions compared to other methods for land evaluation in the context of the mentioned aim through WLC method.