Emphasizing the rank positions in a distance-based aggregation procedure

This paper deals with the problem of aggregating individual preferences in order to obtain a social order. In particular, a preference aggregation procedure is proposed for those cases in which the decision-makers express their preferences by means of a ranking of alternatives. Among the most commonly applied methods for this purpose are those based on distance measures between individual and collective preferences, which look for the solution that minimizes the disagreement across decision-makers. This class of procedures may include weighting factors in order to emphasize the relative importance of the individuals. In the model proposed here, a weighted disagreement function that computes the differences between alternatives differentiating the rank positions of the alternatives is developed. The proposed disagreement function weighs the differences between orders depending on the ordinal position that the alternative occupies.