Multiplicative consistency of linguistic preference relations with weakened hedges

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Yao, Xuan^a | Wang, Hai^b | Xu, Zeshui^{a; c; *}

Affiliations: [a] School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China | [b] School of Information Engineering, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China | [c] Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Zeshui Xu, E-mail: xuzeshui@263.net.

Abstract: Preference relations are often used to derive the priority of attributes and/or alternatives. Linguistic term with weakened hedges (LTWH) as a type of complex linguistic expressions can more straightforwardly describe the linguistic information provided by DMs when evaluating under uncertainties. The preference relations represented by LTWHs are an effective tool to model linguistic information. The concept and properties of additive consistency have been proposed before. This paper aims to study the multiplicative consistency of preference relations expressed by LWTHs. This paper constructs the principle of inspection for multiplicative consistency. Especially, the theories and algorithms for consistency checking and improving are proposed. We develop an automatic approach to improve a LWHPR that is not multiplicatively consistent. Finally, we demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method through a case study of evaluating the attributes in the prevention of haze pollution in China.

Keywords: Preference relations, multiplicative consistency, linguistic term with weakened hedges

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-213170

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 5817-5832, 2022