A novel measure of entropy and COPRAS based on Fermatean fuzzy sets and its analysis of early childhood feeding behaviors
SOFT COMPUTING, cilt.30, sa.10, ss.1-18, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 30 Sayı: 10
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s00500-026-11457-x
- Dergi Adı: SOFT COMPUTING
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Applied Science & Technology Source, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Engineering Source (EBSCO), Scopus, Technology Collection (ProQuest), Aerospace Database, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Compendex, INSPEC, zbMATH
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-18
- İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa Adresli: Evet
Özet
This study aims to address early childhood nutritional behaviors from a sustainability perspective, evaluating the multidimensional factors that influence them within an integrated decision-making framework. Considering the decisive role of nutritional habits acquired in early childhood on an individual’s lifelong health status and the sustainability of societal health systems, these behaviors need to be considered not only in their biological but also in their environmental, behavioral, and socioeconomic dimensions. In this context, a novel entropy measure based on Fermatean fuzzy sets has been developed for the field of early childhood nutrition, where uncertainty and subjective evaluations are intense, and a unique multi-criteria decision-making approach has been proposed by integrating it with the COPRAS method. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, we evaluated sustainable nutritional behaviors for early childhood across four basic alternatives (seasonal feeding, natural feeding, adequate and balanced feeding, and economical feeding) and within a framework of numerous criteria that represent these alternatives. We converted linguistic evaluations based on expert opinions into Fermatean fuzzy numbers, criterion weights were objectively determined using the developed entropy approach, and alternatives
were ranked using the COPRAS method. The findings indicate that the natural feeding approach has the highest priority in establishing sustainable eating behaviors in early childhood, followed by seasonal feeding, adequate and balanced nutrition, and economically viable nutritional alternatives. The results reveal that sustainability in early childhood is built not through cognitive awareness, but through repeatable, internalized behaviors in daily life. This study offers a holistic perspective based on behavioral sustainability to the early childhood nutrition literature. It contributes a new entropy measure and an applicable framework for multi-criteria decision-making to the Fermatean fuzzy sets literature.