<p>Evaluating sustainability promotion in early childhood education (ECE) institutions involves complex interdependent factors and substantial uncertainty arising from expert judgment diversity. To address this, this study proposes a novel hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model that integrates interval neutrosophic fuzzy sets (INS) with the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-based analytic network process (DANP) and the multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) method. The use of interval neutrosophic logic allows for more comprehensive uncertainty modeling by incorporating truth, indeterminacy, and falsity degrees and supports the aggregation of divergent expert opinions into bounded intervals, thereby improving judgment robustness. The proposed INS–DANP–MABAC model not only captures the causal interdependencies among sustainability criteria but also enables consistent ranking of institutional performance across four ECE types: private, quasi-public, non-profit, and public. Results indicate that “innovation and creativity” is the most influential factor, and “public kindergartens” perform best overall, particularly in areas such as curriculum content, social engagement, and ecosystem awareness. Through sensitivity testing and comparative analyses with multiple MCDM methods, the proposed framework and model demonstrates strong robustness and validity, offering a transferable tool for sustainability-oriented decision-making in education and related social systems.</p>