Abstract: Country risk is an important external factor that Chinese companies prioritize for overseas investment. The multi-dimensional composition nature of country risk, the objective existence of risk interdependencies from different dimensions, and the differentiated preferences of company decision-makers, have increased the difficulty of country risk assessment for overseas investment. In this paper, risk interdependence and decision-makers’ preference are introduced, and a country risk assessment method for overseas investment which combines two tuple DEMATEL method, Gini coefficient objective weighting method and VIKOR method are proposed to quantify risk interdependence, determine the weight of risk assessment index from the perspective of subjective and objective integration, and obtain the country ranking of investment risks under different decision-making mechanisms. Subsequently, an empirical study based on the collected data from 63 countries along the Belt and Road is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the assessment results are further analyzed. The research results can provide necessary decision support for location selection of oversea investment, and help Chinese enterprises to prevent overseas investment risk and promote the development of the Belt and Road.

Key words: the Belt and Road, country risk, risk interdependence, decision makers’ preference