Group Decision Making with Heterogeneous Preference Structures: An Automatic Mechanism to Support Consensus Reaching

Bowen Zhang (), Yucheng Dong () and Enrique Herrera-Viedma ()
Additional contact information
Bowen Zhang: Xidian University
Yucheng Dong: Sichuan University
Enrique Herrera-Viedma: University of Granada

Group Decision and Negotiation, 2019, vol. 28, issue 3, No 7, 585-617

Abstract: Abstract In real-world decision problems, decision makers usually express their opinions with different preference structures. In order to deal with the heterogeneous preference information in group decision making, this paper presents an optimization-based consensus model for group decision making with heterogeneous preference structures (utility values, preference orderings, multiplicative preference relations and additive preference relations). This proposal seeks to minimize the information loss between decision makers’ heterogeneous preference information and individual preference vectors and also seeks the collective solution with a consensus. Meanwhile, in order to justify the consensus model, we discuss its internal aggregation operator between the obtained individual and group preference vectors, demonstrate that the proposed model satisfies the Pareto principle of social choice theory, and prove the uniqueness of the solution to the optimization model. Furthermore, based on the proposed optimization-based consensus model, we present an automatic mechanism to support consensus reaching in the group decision making with heterogeneous preference structures. In the consensus reaching process, the obtained individual and group preference vectors are considered as a decision aid which decision makers can use as a reference to adjust their preference opinions. Finally, detailed simulation experiments and comparison analysis are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed model.

Keywords: Group decision and negotiation; Heterogeneous preference structures; Consensus; Information loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10726-018-09609-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:grdene:v:28:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10726-018-09609-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10726/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10726-018-09609-y

Access Statistics for this article

Group Decision and Negotiation is currently edited by Gregory E. Kersten

More articles in Group Decision and Negotiation from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().