Linguistic weighted aggregation under confidence levels

Abstract

We develop some new linguistic aggregation operators based on confidence levels. Firstly, we introduce the confidence linguistic weighted averaging (CLWA) operator and the confidence linguistic ordered weighted averaging (CLOWA) operator. These two new linguistic aggregation operators are able to consider the confidence level of the aggregated arguments provided by the information providers. We also study some of their properties. Then, based on the generalized means, we introduce the confidence generalized linguistic ordered weighted averaging (CGLOWA) operator. The main advantage of the CGLOWA operator is that it includes a wide range of special cases such as the CLOWA operator, the confidence linguistic ordered weighted quadratic averaging (CLOWQA) operator, and the confidence linguistic ordered weighted geometric (CLOWG) operator. Finally, we develop an application of the new approach in a multicriteria decision-making under linguistic environment and illustrate it with a numerical example.