Performance evaluation of agricultural product suppliers considering decision preferences

Abstract Agricultural product suppliers play a crucial role in ensuring the stability of the food supply chain, meeting market demands, promoting agricultural economic development, and safeguarding consumer food safety. Therefore, when evaluating agricultural product suppliers, it is necessary to consider both their economic and sustainability aspects. This paper proposes a new performance assessment method that ensures distinguishable evaluation results even when the evaluation indicators for agricultural product suppliers include undesirable outputs and fuzzy numbers, and that the evaluation weights are reasonable. The assessment process takes into account the preferences and optimism levels of both decision-makers and the suppliers being evaluated, reducing decision-making risks and making the results more acceptable to participants. The introduction of prospect theory ensures more realistic evaluation outcomes. Through a case analysis of 11 corn suppliers, the superiority and effectiveness of this method are verified. The results show that the decision-makers’ reference point preferences, levels of optimism, and degrees of rationality significantly affect the performance evaluation results of agricultural product suppliers.