A multicriteria assessment model for countries’ degree of preparedness for successful impact investing

Abstract

Purpose

In recent years there has been a significant acceleration in the market growth of social impact investing. Policy makers, regulatory bodies and national decision-makers should base their decision-making processes on multiple criteria. These criteria are, by nature, imprecise, ambiguous and uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to provide decision-makers with a mathematical tool which aids them in their decision-making processes identifying the degree of appropriateness of less developed countries in terms of potential success of investment in vaccination campaigns.

Design/methodology/approach

In this work, the authors have developed a decision-making tool within the framework of multiple criteria decision making and Fuzzy Logic, which aims to aid decision-makers for vaccinations campaigns in less developed countries. In particular, the authors have proposed a Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution-based method which is able to work in fuzzy environment in order to assess and rank countries based on their fuzzy degree of appropriateness for impact investing in vaccines.

Findings

The impact investing market provides capital from private sources to address many pressing global challenges such as access to basic services as health. Governments have, therefore, an essential role in supporting the development of this market by improving the risk/return profile of investments through access to credit facilities, tax credits or subsidies or defining the regulation of the supply of investments, provision of technical assistance to investing private companies and co-financing. The proposed framework permits funding decision making taking into account the degree of preparedness and adequacy for impact investing in vaccines of the selected countries.

Research limitations/implications

Impact investing can play a key role in the reduction of immunization gap offering suitable strategies for both, governments and private investors for the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, in order to make good financial decisions managers should take into account not only health, income, education and other social criteria but also the degree of basic preparedness of the countries in order to ensure the success of the immunization campaigns which means taking into account availability of basic infrastructures, access to electricity, political stability among other criteria.

Practical implications

However, in order to make good financial decisions managers should take into account not only health, income, education and other social criteria but also the degree of basic preparedness of the countries in order to ensure the success of the immunization campaigns which means taking into account availability of basic infrastructures, access to electricity, political stability among other criteria.

Originality/value

The proposed model will allow public and private decision makers to make better investment decisions in terms of effectiveness as the provided ranking of countries candidates for the investments is more realistic and takes into account more decision dimensions.

Citation

León, T., Liern, V. and Pérez-Gladish, B. (2020), "A multicriteria assessment model for countries’ degree of preparedness for successful impact investing", Management Decision, Vol. 58 No. 11, pp. 2455-2471. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-09-2019-1138