Intertemporal Hesitant Fuzzy Soft Sets: Application to Group Decision Making

Abstract

A novel hybrid soft set model called intertemporal hesitant fuzzy soft set is proposed, and then, it is showed how it can deal with group decision making problems. This model can be used to incorporate hesitant information that varies across time, when the alternatives are described by their degree of agreement with various characteristics. According to the period of time (whether it is indefinitely long or with a known termination date), the proposed model is, respectively, called long-term and short-term intertemporal hesitant fuzzy soft set. Corresponding group decision making approaches are provided, where the application of Quasi-Hyperbolic discounting permits to deal with the time-inconsistent experts’ preferences. Both the effect of scores of hesitant fuzzy elements and the effect of uncertainty contained in hesitant information are considered in the proposed decision approaches.