A Selecting Data Envelopment Analysis Approach Under an Onion Framework to Select Quality Service Criteria and Evaluate the Perception of Airport Concessionaires’ Users About Brazilian Airports

Traditional methods of cost–benefit analysis in business administration usually measure the performance of activities exclusively in monetary terms, though the airport users’ perception of quality service is relevant to airlines’ operations. This paper aims to present a novel Onion framework for Selecting Data Envelopment Analysis (Selecting DEA) model to select multiple quality service criteria, compare, and evaluate the perception of airport concessionaires’ users about Brazilian airports through layers of analysis. This Onion framework consists of running the DEA again, in loop, where each loop is considered an onion layer, and each loop only with the criteria not selected for any of the Decision-Making Units (DMUs) in the previous loop, and to repeat it until all criteria is selected for at least one DMU and there are no more criteria for another layer. The first step was the compilation of the answers of 31 criteria, collected monthly from the Brazilian National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) for the main airports, deemed as Decision-Making Units (DMUs) in this study, from 2015 to 2017 for the empirical application (there are more measures than DMUs). The results showed 14 layers of the Selecting DEA, the last layer had most of the important quality service criteria. It can support decision-makers to select criteria to evaluate DMUs and support management best practices.