Applying fuzzy linguistic preference relations to the improvement of consistency of fuzzy AHP

  • Authors:

  • Tien-Chin Wang;Yueh-Hsiang Chen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Management, I-Shou University, 1, Section 1, Hsueh-Cheng Road, Ta-Hsu Hsiang, Kaohsiung 840, Taiwan;Department of Information Engineering, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung 840, Taiwan and Department of Information Management, Kao-Yuan University, Kaohsiung 821, Taiwan

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The lack of consistency in decision making can lead to inconsistent conclusions. In fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP) method, it is difficult to ensure a consistent pairwise comparison. Furthermore, establishing a pairwise comparison matrix requires nx(n-1)2 judgments for a level with n criteria (alternatives). The number of comparisons increases as the number of criteria increases. Therefore, the decision makers judgments will most likely be inconsistent. To alleviate inconsistencies, this study applies fuzzy linguistic preference relations (Fuzzy LinPreRa) to construct a pairwise comparison matrix with additive reciprocal property and consistency. In this study, the fuzzy AHP method is reviewed, and then the Fuzzy LinPreRa method is proposed. Finally, the presented method is applied to the example addressed by Kahraman et al. [C. Kahraman, D. Ruan, I. Dogan, Fuzzy group decision making for facility location selection, Information Sciences 157 (2003) 135-153]. This study reveals that the proposed method yields consistent decision rankings from only n-1 pairwise comparisons, which is the same result as in Kahraman et al. research. The presented fuzzy linguistic preference relations method is an easy and practical way to provide a mechanism for improving consistency in fuzzy AHP method.