Investigating rank reversal in reciprocal fuzzy preference relation based on additive consistency: Causes and solutions

Rank reversal is a common phenomenon in decision making. Rank reversal occurs when a new alternative is added to (or removed from) a set of alternatives, which causes change in the ranking order of the alternatives. This paper studies the possible causes of rank reversal in reciprocal preference relation based on additive consistency. Our investigation reveals that inconsistency of information is the main cause of this phenomena in preference relations followed by ranking score aggregation. We propose score aggregation methods to address the phenomenon of rank reversal. The proposed methods are illustrated using numerical examples. The results are better than other tested methods.