Rural development decision support using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

This paper presents a decision model based upon community preferences to prioritize activities that support the development of a rural area in Chile. Local government in the region has tried to stimulate economic development for many years without success. The goals surrounding incentive programs that have been offered are complex and conflicting. Often, inconsistencies exist between community preferences, incentive programs, and the stated goals. Determining the best activities to carry out is difficult in a multi-attribute decision-making situation like this. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), developed by Thomas L. Saaty, allows the arranging of factors in a hierarchical structure and prioritizing them to make trade-offs between decision criteria and alternatives to find the best policies or actions to achieve the desired growth in the area.