Grey system theory in sustainable development research—a literature review (2011−2021)

Purpose As the grey systems theory has been widely used in the field of sustainable development (SD) research, in the following, a short literature overview will be put forward, starting from the usage of these theories in the economic development, social inclusion and environmental protection contributions to the evolving process of SD during 2011–2021. The purpose of this paper is to identify some key studies from all the SD areas in which the grey systems can be used in order to open and to bring the researchers to new domains in which they can reveal their interest and in which they can successfully use the methods offered by the grey systems theory. Design/methodology/approach Using the search engine offered by the Google Scholar and the Web of Science (WoS), a literature review has been performed for the grey systems applications on SD research on both grey relational analysis (GRA) and grey forecasting. In addition, some grey evaluation theories – clustering evaluation models and grey target decision models – have also been presented. Findings Many grey models are widely used in the field of SD. Compared with other methods such as grey prediction, grey evaluation and decision-making model, GRA technology is the most used method, and the research using this method is more than three times that of all other methods. Research limitations/implications The present paper identifies some of the most representative examples in which the grey system theory (GST) has been used, but, in the same time, there are a lot of studies that have not been mentioned here due to the lack of space. Originality/value The present paper focuses on the SD applications in which GST has been successfully used, bringing to the reader a general overview on this field and, in the same time, enables new research perspectives.