Extension of the KEMIRA Multi-criteria Choice Method to Group Decision Making: The Case of Choosing the Best Crop Varieties

Most land use problems, such as the choice of varieties of a given crop for a region, are solved by considering a single decision maker. In the case where there are several decision-makers, it is often assumed that a consensus has been reached among them so that they all act as one decision-maker. To compensate for this single decision-maker view, literature propose several multi-criteria methods for group decision making. However, most of them suffer from certain limitations. A first limitation may be the large number of parameters to be determined during the execution of the decision process, which may be inherent to the method used itself. The difficulty of aggregating the preferences of each stakeholder, who are now all considered to be decision-makers, in order to arrive at a decision that can be accepted by all of them, constitutes a second limitation. In this work, we contribute to remedy these two limitations by proposing an extension of the existing KEMIRA multi-criteria choice method, namely KEMIRA-group, for group decision making. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach through a case study of the selection of the best cowpea varieties (crop) appropriate to a given region in West Africa (Burkina Faso).