The Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) for Mass-Participation Decision Making

The Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis is a methodology that allows for the involvement of multiple stakeholders within a decision-making process. It reveals the consensus and conflicts between the different groups of people that are involved in the evaluation but hold different interests. Nowadays, the concept of the “stakeholder” in MAMCA gradually shifts to the “stakeholder group”, and there is a need for involving more than one evaluator in the stakeholder group to make sure all the voices from the group will be heard instead of being represented by one. Especially when a stakeholder group contains a large variation in interests, concerns and socio-economic characteristics. Additionally, one group can have subgroups that might be hard to reach, and therefore are not or un-der-represented in the analysis. This is typically the case for the ‘citizens’ stakeholder group.

In order to fulfill the needs of the involvement of many different stakeholders within stakeholder groups, the mass-participation function was developed in MAMCA and the MAMCA survey tool is designed. This tool allows the decision-maker to design the dedicated survey for the stakeholder group which needs the mass-participation function. The easy-to-understand evaluation process is used to avoid time-consuming elicitation. It is possible to check the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the stakeholders within the stakeholder group based on the socio-economic profiles collected in the survey