Empirical Properties of Group Preference Aggregation Methods Employed in AHP: Theory and Evidence

Abstract

We study various methods of aggregating individual judgments and individual priorities in group decision making with the AHP. The focus is on the empirical properties of the various methods, mainly on the extent to which the various aggregation methods represent an accurate approximation of the priority vector of interest. We identify five main classes of aggregation procedures which provide identical or very similar empirical expressions for the vectors of interest. We also propose a method to decompose in the AHP response matrix distortions due to random errors and perturbations caused by cognitive bias predicted by the mathematical psychology literature. We test the decomposition with experimental data and find that perturbations in group decision making caused by cognitive distortions are more important than those caused by random errors. We propose methods to correct systematic distortions.