Distance-Based Consistency Measure and Priority Weights of Best-Worst Multi-Criteria Decision Making Method

Abstract

Best-Worst method (BWM) is a new multi-criteria decision-making method based on pairwise comparisons, but only the comparisons concerning the best and the worst alternatives or criteria. This method shows some significant advantages in the simplicity with a less requirement of comparison data and reliability with better consistency. This paper proposes a new consistency measure method based on the distance of the vectors of reference comparisons in BWM because the difference of the preference in two vectors directly affects the reliability of results. Through the establishment of the threshold of consistency ratio, we supplement the definition of satisfactory consistency of the comparisons in BWM. With comparisons satisfying the acceptable consistency, we use linear programming models to find all possible priority weights between the preferences given by decision maker and derive interval weights. For comparisons with unacceptable consistency, another approach is presented to find the interval weights meeting the consistent requirement. At last, several examples are used to illustrate the details of process.