A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic TODIM Method Based on a Score Function

Abstract

Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) are very useful for dealing with the situations in which the decision makers hesitate among several linguistic terms to assess an alternative. Some multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods have been developed to deal with HFLTSs. These methods are derived under the assumption that the decision maker is completely rational and do not consider the decision maker's psychological behavior. But some studies about behavioral experiments have shown that the decision maker is bounded rational in decision processes and the behavior of the decision maker plays an important role in decision analysis. In this paper, we extend the classical TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multi-criteria decision-making) method to solve MCDM problems dealing with HFLTSs and considering the decision maker's psychological behavior. A novel score function to compare HFLTSs more effectively is defined. This function is also used in the proposed TODIM method. Finally, a decision-making problem that concerns the evaluation and ranking of several telecommunications service providers is used to illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.