Analyzing the interrelationships among barriers to green procurement in photovoltaic industry: An integrated method

Although the environmental issues behind solar energy and green procurement (GP) have received increasing attention, industries still struggle to identify key barriers hindering GP and analyze the interrelationships among them. Most of the previous studies ignored the cognition uncertainty in assessing the barriers to GP, and failed to consider the impact of barrier strength on the interrelationships among barriers. This paper proposes a rough weighted method that integrates the advantages of DEMATEL (Decision-Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory) and ISM (Interpretive Structural Modeling). Variable rough precision theory is introduced to control the cognition uncertainty and vagueness in assessing the barriers. This novel approach is then applied to analyze the interrelationships among barriers to GP in China's photovoltaic (PV) industry. The analysis results show that internal obstacles (e.g. company's unawareness) are more important than external obstacles (e.g. lack of legislation). However, external obstacles (especially weak incentive policies) should be solved first by policy-makers because internal obstacles are found to be caused by external obstacles. Finally, comparative studies are employed to prove the effectiveness of the proposed method. Further studies are expected to apply the proposed method to different industries and promote the development of GP.