A hesitant fuzzy model of computational trust considering hesitancy, vagueness and uncertainty

摘要

The aim of this work is to introduce a trust model, which is highly consistent with the social nature of trust in computational domains. To this end, we propose a hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria decision making based computational trust model capable of taking into account the fundamental building blocks corresponding to the concept of trust. The proposed model is capable of considering the contextuality property of trust and the subjective priorities of the trustor regarding the chosen goal. This is due to viewing trust not as a single label or an integrated concept, but as a collection of trustworthiness facets that may form the trust decision in various contexts and toward different goals. The main benefit of the proposed model is the consideration of the hesitancy of recommenders and the trustor in the process of trust decision making which can create a more flexible mapping between the social and computational requirements of trust. This type of formulation also allows for taking into account the vagueness of the provided opinions. In addition to the vagueness of the provided opinions, the model is capable of considering the certainty of recommendations and its effect on the aggregation process of gathered opinions. In the proposed model, the taste of the recommenders and the similarity of opinions are also considered. This will allow the model to assign more weight to recommendations that have a similar taste compared to the trustor. Finally, taking into consideration the attitudes of the trustors toward change of personality that may occur for various entities in the environment is another advantage of the proposed model. A step-by-step illustrative example and the results of several experimental evaluations, which demonstrate the benefits of the proposed model, are also presented in this paper. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.