Decision-making with fuzzy alternatives: A new method based on decision maker's fuzziness attitude.

摘要

Decision making problems that involve information that is vague and cannot be clearly or uniquely defined can be addressed with fuzzy logic. However, when a final choice among fuzzy alternatives has to be made, the fuzziness needs to be removed to produce a ranking of the alternatives. However, current fuzzy ranking methods do not account for subjective values of the decision maker. In this paper the concept of the decision maker attitude toward fuzziness is defined and a new fuzzy ranking method is derived. Both fuzziness attitude and the corresponding fuzzy ranking method as defined can be applied to either probabilistic or fuzzy formulations of decision problems under risk and uncertainty. The feasibility and validity of the new method is ascertained through an experiment based on Lichtenstein and Slovic's (1971) study of preference reversals in gambling decisions. The results show that the proposed fuzzy ranking method leads to fewer preference reversals than traditional utility theory with respect to actual choices. It is concluded that the concept of fuzziness attitude can play a significant role in decision making between fuzzy alternatives.