Deriving the personalized individual semantics of linguistic information from flexible linguistic preference relations

Abstract

In group decision making, flexible linguistic preference relations (FLPRs) are very useful with the pairwise comparisons taking the form of flexible linguistic expressions (FLEs). Due to the fact that different decision makers have different understandings of words, this paper investigates the personalized individual semantics (PISs) of the linguistic information in FLPRs. Two optimization models are constructed to compute a linguistic distribution which is closest to an incomplete FLE. The FLPRs are transformed into fuzzy preference relations by using optimization models which maximize consistency and consensus of the fuzzy preference relations. The PISs of linguistic terms and subsets of the linguistic term set are obtained in this process. A group decision making model based on FLPRs is presented and a green supplier selection problem in automotive industry is solved by using the proposed model. The comparative analysis is presented to show the feasibility of the group decision making model.