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Top1. Introduction
The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method was developed by the Battelle memorial association of the Geneva research center (Fontela and Gabus, 1976; Gabus and Fontela, 1973). Initially, the DEMATEL method was used to study the complex world problems regarding things like: race, hunger, energy, and environmental protection (Fontela and Gabus, 1976). In recent years, there are many researches have widely applied DEMATEL to solve problems in different fields successfully (Chen, 2012a; Chen, 2012b; Hajime, Kenichi and Hajime, 2005; Kim, 2006; Lee, Chen and Chung, 2012; Chen, Lee, Yang, and Lee, 2013; Chen, Lee and Wu, 2012).
In the DEMATEL method, an appropriate threshold value is necessary to obtain a suitable effect-relations map and adequate information for further analysis or decision-making. Following the traditional method, the researchers set a threshold value by conducting discussions with experts. The researcher set up an appropriate threshold value and then outlines the effect-relations map to assess whether the effect-relations map is suitable for the structure of the problem. If not, the threshold value is substituted with another value, and another effect-relations map is redrawn until a consensus is achieved amongst the researchers. It is difficult to choose a consistent threshold value, especially if there are too many experts contributing an opinion to the same study. When the problem has many factors, the work involved to achieve the same threshold value becomes more complex (Lia and Tzeng, 2009).
Li and Tzeng (2009) propose using maximum mean de-entropy (MMDE) to solve the above threshold problems, which obtains the threshold by objective computation means. Currently, many researchers have used the combination of DEMATEL and MMDE (Chen, 2012a; Chen, 2012b; Chen, Lee, 2012; Chen, Lee and Wu, 2012). However, neither of these two methods has been equipped with direct application software, which brings much inconvenience to the researchers. Therefore, the primary purpose of the study is to develop easy-to-use software. It takes the example of developing Taiwan into tourists’ transport center of East Asia (Chen and Lee, 2012) to instruct the operation of the software.