An improved interval-valued hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making method and applications

Abstract

The Bonferroni mean (BM) can be used in situations where the aggregated arguments are correlated. BM is very useful for solving decision-making problems. For describing fuzziness and vagueness more accurately, the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set (IVHFS), which is a generalization of the hesitant fuzzy set (HFS), can be used to describe the membership degrees with interval numbers. The aim of this paper is to propose the interval-valued hesitant fuzzy Bonferroni mean (IVHFBM) for aggregating interval-valued hesitant fuzzy information. Furthermore, the weighted form of IVHFBM (IVHFWBM) is forwarded and, hereby, a multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) method is established. A case study on the problem of evaluating research funding applications in China is analyzed. A comparison between the proposed method and existing ones demonstrates its practicability.