A group decision-making approach based on evidential reasoning for multiple criteria sorting problem with uncertainty

Jiapeng Liu, Xiuwu Liao and Jian-bo Yang

European Journal of Operational Research, 2015, vol. 246, issue 3, 858-873

Abstract: A new group decision-making approach is developed to address a multiple criteria sorting problem with uncertainty. The uncertainty in this paper refers to imprecise evaluations of alternatives with respect to the considered criteria. The belief structure and the evidential reasoning approach are employed to represent and aggregate the uncertain evaluations. In our approach, the preference information elicited from a group of decision makers is composed of the assignment examples of some reference alternatives. The disaggregation–aggregation paradigm is utilized to infer compatible preference models from these assignment examples. To help the group reach an agreement on the assignment of alternatives, we propose a consensus-reaching process. In this process, a consensus degree is defined to measure the agreement among the decision makers’ opinions. When the decision makers are not satisfied with the consensus degree, possible solutions are explored to help them adjust assignment examples in order to improve the consensus level. If the consensus degree arrives at a satisfactory level, a linear program is built to determine the collective assignment of alternatives. The application of the proposed approach to a customer satisfaction analysis is presented at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Multiple criteria analysis; Multiple criteria sorting; Evidential reasoning approach; Group consensus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:246:y:2015:i:3:p:858-873

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.05.027

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