Corporate social responsibility performance evaluation from the perspective of stakeholder heterogeneity based on fuzzy analytical hierarchy process integrated TOPSIS

The effective evaluation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is the basis for stakeholders to understand the level of CSR fulfillment, which is further conducive to the sustainable development of society. Due to the heterogeneity of stakeholders, different stakeholders usually have different emphasis on CSR. However, the previous studies on CSR performance evaluation have neglected the different preferences of stakeholders for CSR, and fails to deeply analyze the risk and potential of CSR. In order to solve the above problems, an internal type‐2 trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (IT2TrFN)—analytical hierarchy process based TOPSIS evaluation framework is established in this paper which considering the heterogeneity of stakeholders in the fuzzy environment. Following that, via the comparative analysis of specific‐stakeholder and overall‐stakeholder, the underlying risk and potential of CSR for different stakeholders are identified for the first time. In addition, this paper conducts empirically research on the CSR of Chinese listed companies in 2017–2018 from the perspective of six types of enterprise stakeholders. Finally, this article enriches the existing CSR evaluation method and theory.