Evaluating the Regulatory Environment of Overseas Electric Power Market Based on a Hybrid Evaluation Model

This paper develops a hybrid model for evaluating the regulatory environment of overseas electric power market (OEPM), which is of great theoretical and practical significance for power grid enterprises. Power regulation and investment environment evaluation theories as well as fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) are referenced to identify the final evaluation indicators. Owing to the presence of qualitative indicators in the index system, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and improved gray relational analysis (IGRA) approaches are combined to determine the indicator weights so as to ensure the credibility of the weights. Considering the non-compensatory principle among primary indicators, the improved fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (IFCEM) based on multiplicative synthesis technique is applied to evaluate the alternatives. The empirical results indicate that “Return on Investment” and “Bilateral Relationship” are the main perspectives that greatly affect the regulatory environment of OEPM, and that UK and Greece are the best and worst alternatives in terms of the regulatory environment of OEPM in the analyzed countries. Totally, the proposed hybrid framework expressed great capacity to evaluate and rank the regulatory environment of OEPM and can be also popularized in other fields to support enterprises in making decisions by evaluating the alternatives with ambiguity and uncertainty.