An outcome-oriented approach to multicriteria decision analysis with intuitionistic fuzzy optimistic/pessimistic operators

The concept of Atanassov’s intuitionistic fuzzy sets is a generalization of ordinary fuzzy sets. Under the intuitionistic fuzzy decision environment, this paper develops optimistic and pessimistic point operators to draw the influences of optimism and pessimism on multiple criteria decision analysis. We propose the optimistic and pessimistic score functions based on point operators to measure evaluations of the alternative with respect to each criterion. The suitability function can then be established to determine the degree to which the alternative satisfies the decision maker’s requirement. An optimization model with suitability functions is propounded on account of ill-known membership grades to generate optimal weights for criteria. Finally, an outcome-oriented approach is adopted to validate the proposed methods. Several multiattribute evaluation cases in consumer decision making reality are addressed to examine the feasibility and applicability of the current method. From the empirical results of effectiveness examination, the proposed intuitionistic fuzzy multicriteria decision making method with optimistic/pessimistic score functions performed significantly better than the method without consideration of optimism/pessimism. Therefore, we can conclude that the proposed methods by using intuitionistic fuzzy optimistic/pessimistic point operators have desirable potentials in practice.