Optimizing Client Selection for Wildlife Conservation Projects: A Comprehensive Approach Using AHP and Entropy Weighting

Abstract

Illegal wildlife trade is becoming increasingly rampant. In order to select an appropriate client for wildlife conservation, a thorough analysis of the client's ability to implement our recommendations is necessary. Therefore, we use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) system to assess the alignment between the client's capabilities and the project requirements. In this paper, we develop an AHP assessment model that considers the correspondence between the client's capabilities in project implementation and the project requirements. Subsequently, we processed and evaluated the collected client data using the entropy weighting method to derive weights on six dimensions. The correspondence data was then applied to the AHP to determine the best choice based on the decision hierarchy and criteria. The combined entropy-AHP approach utilizes the strengths of both methods to make powerful data-driven decisions. Ultimately, through a series of calculations and tests, we identified the most desirable customer type as government.