Understanding the Relationships among Psychological Stress Influencing Factors in Nuclear Power Plant Operators: an Integrated DEMATEL–ANP Approach

Psychological stress among nuclear power plant (NPP) operators represents a critical human factors challenge, as it can impair cognitive performance and decision-making, especially during high-risk scenarios. While prior research has identified various stressors, the interdependencies and systemic influences among these factors remain underexplored. This study adopts an integrated DEMATEL–ANP approach to quantify the causal relationships and relative importance of operator stressors. A previously developed grounded-theory indicator system—comprising seven primary dimensions and 22 secondary indicators—serves as the conceptual input. DEMATEL is used to map the direct and indirect influences among stressors, and ANP is employed to derive global weights within the interactive stress network. A case study involving 16 expert evaluations demonstrates that alarm load, task complexity, and interface management load are the most influential primary stress dimensions, while emergency response and novel event handling emerge as key secondary stressors. The integrated DEMATEL–ANP model not only identifies dominant stress drivers but also reveals how stressors propagate through feedback and dependence relationships. The findings offer a systemic perspective on operator stress formation and provide a decision-support basis for prioritizing stress-mitigation strategies in NPP operations.