Evaluating Regional Agricultural Resilience Using Dynamic CoCoSo with Hybrid Weights: A Case Study of Sichuan, China

Regions with insufficient resilience in their agriculture industry can usually be exposed to threats of unstable supply of food and agricultural products. Therefore, agricultural resilience is important for regional development and welfare. To support the development of agricultural resilience, proper policies and incentives need to be implemented. To achieve this, the first step is to appropriately evaluate the regional agricultural resilience levels. In this study, a novel agricultural resilience evaluation method was developed based on hybrid weighting approaches and dynamic CoCoSo (i.e., Combined Compromise Solution). The method can capture the temporal change in resilience levels, integrate richer information, and provide more robust output. To confirm its effectiveness, the method was applied to the evaluation of regional agricultural resilience in 21 cities of Sichuan province in China across five years. Over a recent five-year period, the annual average levels of agricultural resilience in Sichuan have increased, although this trend became less significant in more recent years. Also, the resilience levels among cities are diverse, and some cities have experienced significant changes of resilience across years. When considering temporal effects integrating five years, Liangshanzhou city ranks the first and Bazhong city ranks the last in terms of their resilience levels, but such results can depend on CoCoSo parameters and time weight parameters, with the latter having more significant influence. This study can contribute to the existing literature by providing new methodological tools for agricultural resilience research and regional management studies. Also, this study can help identify cities with different agricultural resilience levels and dynamics, informing practitioners’ new perspectives for agricultural policy evaluation as well as business strategy planning.