Interval-valued q-rung orthopair fuzzy complex proportional assessment-based approach and its application for evaluating the factors of blockchain technology in various domains

Blockchain technology (BT) is a digitally decentralized, distributed and public ledger, which considers a secure and viable solution for storing and accessing the record transactions in a public or private peer-to-peer network and assures a smart world of automation of complex services. This paper aims to evaluate the factors persuading the BT adoption and also to assess the possible application areas for the adoption of BT. Implementation of the BT process considers multiple criteria and alternatives with uncertain information; therefore, it can be considered as an uncertain multi-criteria decision-making problem. In this context, a hybrid approach is proposed based on the criteria interaction through inter-criteria correlation (CRITIC) and the complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) methods with interval-valued q-rung orthopair fuzzy set (IVq-ROFS) named as the “IVq-ROF-CRITICCOPRAS” framework. In this approach, the significance values of the factors are computed through novel score function-based CRITIC model, whereas the CRITIC-based COPRAS model is employed to rank different domains/application areas for the adoption of BT under IVq-ROFSs environment. In this regard, a novel score function is introduced with its desirable characteristics. Further, the developed model is executed on a case study of BT adoption considering 14 factors, which confirms the efficiency and applicability of introduced approach. Based on the results, the healthcare BT alternative is most appropriate among the others. To evaluate its permanence, sensitivity analysis with regard to various ratings of decision strategic coefficient is presented under IVq-ROFS context. The strength of the developed approach is emphasized by comparing it with some of the former models under the context of IVq-ROFSs. The proposed extension of the COPRAS approach can be utilized to solve other complex group decision-making problems with uncertainties.