Overseas Warehouse Site Evaluation for Cross-Border E-Commerce via Complex Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Analysis

As an emerging logistics mode, overseas warehouses can greatly reduce the impact of epidemics on cross-border trade logistics. To this end, this study proposes a multi-criteria decision-making framework for overseas warehouse site evaluation based on improved evidence theory and a cloud model. First, a novel evaluation index system for overseas warehouse site assessment is constructed from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Considering that traditional evidence theory can only rank evaluation objects, this study combines the cloud model and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution to provide basic belief allocation for evidence theory. Moreover, game theory is used to optimize the integrated weights based on the dynamic weight coefficient of evidence theory and the improved criteria importance through the intercriteria correlation method. Finally, a practical example is presented to demonstrate the proposed method, and several suggestions are offered to improve overseas warehouses from the perspective of enterprises and the government.