Group decision making with fuzzy linguistic preference relations via cooperative games method

• The groupment of the experts in GDM with fuzzy linguistic preference relations is considered.
• An objective weighting algorithm using the cooperative games method is designed.
• By applying the game theory, a new group decision procedure is provided.

When we consider the weighting approach for group decision making with fuzzy linguistic preference relations, the groupment of experts has merely been studied. In this paper, a novel weighting approach on the basis of cooperative games method is developed. The group decision error matrix is built to reflect the deviations of all experts with given initial weighting vector. An iterative algorithm is designed to lower the sum of the decision error so that a final convergence result can be obtained. The advantage of the weighting algorithm is that it can consider the contribution of each expert and reduce the sum of decision error with increasing iteration numbers. Then an optimization model using triangular fuzzy numbers as alternatives’ weights is constructed, whose results are used to rank the alternatives. Finally, a numerical example of subjective evaluation of vehicle sound quality is considered to illustrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed weighting approach in the group decision making problem.