Hesitant fuzzy linguistic information aggregation in decision making

Abstract

As a generalisation of fuzzy linguistic set (FLS), a hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS) is introduced to provide a linguistic and computational basis to increase the richness of linguistic elicitation based on the fuzzy linguistic approach and the use of context-free grammars by using comparative terms. And the HFLTS is a very useful tool to deal with fuzzy linguistic uncertainty, which can be accurately and perfectly described in terms of the opinions of experts. The aim of this paper is to develop a series of aggregation operators for hesitant fuzzy linguistic information. We first discuss the relationship between FLS and HFLTS, based on which we develop some operations for hesitant fuzzy linguistic elements. The correlations among the aggregation operators are further discussed. Based on the developed operators, we introduce a method for decision making with hesitant fuzzy linguistic information. Finally, we give their application in decision making problems.