Analysis of Key Attributes of Wooden Toys via an Interval-Valued Spherical Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process

The evaluation of wooden toys is a complicated process and can be overwhelming for decisionmakers in the presence of many conflicting criteria. Hence, this study proposes a fuzzy decision-making model to identify and prioritize the key attributes of wooden toys. For this purpose, the interval-valued spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which is one of the fuzzy multicriteria decision-making methods, is applied to obtain weight vectors. Firstly, the wooden toy evaluation problem is formulated as a multicriteria decision-making problem. Then five main criteria and twenty subcriteria are defined with the help of experts. The decision-making team carries out the pairwise comparisons of the criteria. As a result, the priority weights are computed and the ranking order of the criteria is revealed. Additionally, the validity of the obtained results is supported by conducting a comparative analysis between other popular fuzzy methods: interval type-2 fuzzy AHP, interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy AHP, and spherical fuzzy AHP. According to the modeling results, the most important criteria are “absence of small parts and sharp edges”, “free of harmful wood preservatives and paints”, “workmanship quality”, “contribution to psychomotor development”, and “contribution to cognitive development”. The proposed framework can be adapted to similar decision processes for the evaluation or improvement of toys. Consequently, the findings of this research will help manufacturers, designers, and consumers in making conscious decisions.