Criteria Assessment for Covid-19 Vaccine Selection via BWM

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discover the supreme and other most important criteria that count in decision making considering vital uncertainties associated with certain parameters, risks, and costs for individuals in order to select the right Covid-19 vaccine based on a set of remarkable criteria. A survey study for assessment according to the given most important criteria based on expert opinion is conducted through the Best-Worst Method (BWM). A form including pairwise comparison vectors was sent to the participants in order to reveal priorities against their subjective decision-making criteria for vaccine selection. The essence of the study addresses that the efficacy criterion has the highest score and it is followed by the other given criteria such as storage requirements, incorporated vaccine technology, and international acceptance criterion. Participants tend to prioritize the origin and price of the vaccine behind all other criteria. Long-sought Covid-19 vaccine and its alternatives with different disclosed criteria of them have led to increasing indecision of people who have an opportunity to choose individually and the government officials who are responsible for country-wide procurement and policymakers; as a result, criteria evaluation is a challenging task. To solve the mentioned multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, BWM is newly employed in vaccine selection problems and its robust approach reveals the subjective priority of the criteria.