Allowing agents to be imprecise: A proposal using multiple linguistic terms

Abstract

In this paper we propose a decision-making procedure where the agents judge the alternatives through linguistic terms such as `very good', `good', `acceptable', etc. If the agents are not con dent about their opinions, they can use a linguistic expression formed by several consecutive linguistic terms. To obtain a ranking on the set of alternatives, the method consists of three di erent stages. The rst stage looks for the alternatives in which the overall opinion is closer to the ideal assessment. The overall opinion is developed by a distance-based process among the individual assessments. The next two stages form a tie-breaking process. Firstly by using a dispersion index based on the Gini coe cient, and secondly by taking into account the number of best-assessments. The main characteristics of the proposed decision-making procedure are analyzed.