Interval-valued probabilistic hesitant fuzzy set based muirhead mean for multi-attribute group decision-making

Abstract

As a powerful generalization to fuzzy set, hesitant fuzzy set (HFS) was introduced, which provided multiple possible membership values to be associated with a specific instance. But HFS did not consider occurrence probability values, and to circumvent the issue, probabilistic HFS (PHFS) was introduced, which associates an occurrence probability value with each hesitant fuzzy element (HFE). Providing such a precise probability value is an open challenge and as a generalization to PHFS, interval-valued PHFS (IVPHFS) was proposed. IVPHFS provided flexibility to decision makers (DMs) by associating a range of values as an occurrence probability for each HFE. To enrich the usefulness of IVPHFS in multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM), in this paper, we extend the Muirhead mean (MM) operator to IVPHFS for aggregating preferences. The MM operator is a generalized operator that can effectively capture the interrelationship between multiple attributes. Some properties of the proposed operator are also discussed. Then, a new programming model is proposed for calculating the weights of attributes using DMs' partial information. Later, a systematic procedure is presented for MAGDM with the proposed operator and the practical use of the operator is demonstrated by using a renewable energy source selection problem. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are discussed in comparison with other methods.