Multiple Attribute Group Decision-Making Method Based on Generalized Interval-Valued Hesitant Uncertain Linguistic Power Aggregation Operators and Linguistic-Scale Functions

Abstract

As an extension of hesitant linguistic term set, interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic set can simultaneously express qualitative information and quantitative information, and reflect the uncertainty and hesitancy of assessment experts. The purpose of this paper is to present a new interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic MAGDM method, which can take into account changes in the semantic environment and negative effects caused by experts’ extreme assessment values. First, by combining with different linguistic-scale functions, some new operational laws and a new comparison method for IVHULNs are developed to accommodate different semantic environments. Then, several new generalized interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic power aggregation operators are proposed, including generalized interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic power average operator and its weight form, generalized interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic power geometric operator and its weighted form. Some desirable properties and some special cases of these operators are investigated and analyzed. Furthermore, based on the proposed operators, an approach to multiple attribute group decision-making with interval-valued hesitant uncertain linguistic information is developed. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the applicability and feasibility of the proposed approach. A comparative analysis with other existing methods is also conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.