Multi-Criteria Decision Making and Recommender Systems

Abstract

Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a popular branch of decision making, where the decision makers need to make a choice based on a number of decision criteria. This process is applicable in various domains of our daily life. For example, a person who is booking a hotel may need to take into account several factors such as location, safety, budget, and room cleanliness. Similarly, a consumer who is placing an order online may consider factors such as budget, quality, functionality, and delivery time. Recommender systems have become a popular solution to assist users in decision making, and these systems can also be developed with multiple criteria and user preferences in mind. This tutorial provides a comprehensive review of MCDM schemes and the development of multi-criteria recommender systems (MCRS). It explores various MCDM solutions and discusses how the current development of MCRS can be linked to these MCDM theories and solutions. The tutorial also highlights the gap between MCDM and the practice of MCRS, which could inspire future development of MCRS.