Stable two-sided matching decision making with incomplete fuzzy preference relations: A disappointment theory based approach

Abstract

Practical two-sided matching decision making problems, such as marriage matching and person-job matching, are often characterized by a lack of knowledge and time constraints. Therefore, matching objects tend to provide comparative preferential information over other matching objects represented by incomplete fuzzy preference relations. In this paper, it is proposed a new approach to stable two-sided matching decision making with incomplete fuzzy preference relations based on disappointment theory. In the proposed approach, the subjective satisfaction degrees of each matching object on one side over matching objects on the other side are first calculated based on priority weight vectors derived from incomplete fuzzy preference relations. Based on disappointment theory, both the disappointment and elation degrees associated with each matching object over matching objects on the other side are calculated. This process is undertaken by considering the probability of each possible matching pair, which are further used to derive the adjusted satisfaction degrees of matching objects. Afterwards, a stable matching optimization model that aims to maximize the total adjusted satisfaction degrees of both sides is constructed by considering stable matching conditions under incomplete information. The optimal stable matching result can be further determined by solving the optimization model. Finally, a numerical example and some comparative studies are presented to demonstrate the characteristics, innovations and added value of the proposed approach.