Assessment of Resources for Geotourism Development: Integrated SWARA-COBRA Approach Under Spherical Fuzzy Environments

Determining the quantitative values of geosites, which constitute the primary supply sources of geotourism, has an important role in developing geotourism. For this reason, the number of studies determining the values of geosites according to various factors is increasing daily. Although these studies make significant contributions to the literature, the problem of objectivity in geosite evaluation stages is still seen as an important issue. In particular, the fact that hesitant, uncertain, and ambiguous information from evaluators prevents objectivity in geosite evaluations is still controversial. In this context, this study aims to adapt fuzzy set-based MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) methods to geosite evaluation. For this purpose, SFSs (Spherical Fuzzy Sets), the new version of fuzzy sets, were used in integration with SWARA (Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis)-COBRA (Comprehensive Distance-Based Ranking) methods. This methodological approach allows for minimising uncertain and ambiguous judgments arising from decision-makers. This proposed methodology was tested as a case study on six geosites selected from two districts of Aksaray province (Güzelyurt and Gülağaç) in Türkiye. According to the findings, significant differences were detected between traditional geosite evaluation approaches and the approach proposed in this study, both in weighting the criteria and ranking geosites. These results show that the proposed methodological approach can be a useful tool in reducing the objectivity problem frequently encountered in evaluating geosites. In this context, the proposed method is expected to contribute to the level of theoretical knowledge that will form the basis of geosites.