Adjusting Trade-Offs in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Problems

Siamak Kheybari
Additional contact information
Siamak Kheybari: NEOMA Business School, 1rue du Maréchal Juin – BP 215, 76130 Mont-Saint-Aignan Cedex, France2Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands

International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), 2021, vol. 20, issue 05, 1499-1517

Abstract: In multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, allowing trade-offs between the decision criteria may result in inappropriate conclusions. Allowing trade-offs implies that the weaknesses of an alternative in some criteria may be compensated by its strengths in other criteria. While, with some problems, there are no concerns with regard to allowing a full trade-off, in other cases, such a trade-off may not follow the actual decision-making problem. This paper proposes a new approach based on defining an upper and lower expectation level for each decision-making criterion. Indeed, the proposed approach is a framework by which the requirements of a decision-maker are considered in the criteria involved in MCDM problems. That distinction generates two primary and secondary performance matrices. The primary matrix includes the values of the alternatives with respect to the individual criterion up to the upper expectation levels of the decision-maker, while the secondary matrix, which is defined by the amounts above the upper levels and below the lower levels of the decision-maker’s expectations, contains each alternative in all the criteria and, to some extent, can exceed the upper levels of the decision-maker’s expectations. The final result of each alternative is calculated by adding its outcome in the two matrices. The results of a numerical example involving cellphone selection show how controlling the trade-offs could affect the results.

Keywords: Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM); decision matrix; trade-off; compensatory methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219622021500401
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:ijitdm:v:20:y:2021:i:05:n:s0219622021500401

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219622021500401

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM) is currently edited by Yong Shi

More articles in International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().