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With the increasing awareness about environmental protection, low-carbon tourism (LCT) is viewed as a new form of sustainable development that can provide greater economic, social and environmental benefits. Evaluating tourism attractions is of great significance for operators of tourism attractions to improve the service quality. Meanwhile, tourists can select the most appropriate LCT scenic spots among the alternatives. To address this decision-making problem, this study develops an integrated multi-criteria group decision-making method within the context of multi-granular linguistic distribution assessments. First, the best-worst method is employed to identify the weights of the criteria. Second, an extended relative entropy-based method that combines a proximity entropy weight and a similarity entropy weight is developed to assign weights to decision-makers in terms of each criterion. Third, an improved multi-granular linguistic distribution ORESTE (Organísation, rangement et Synthèse de données relarionnelles, in French) is proposed to prioritize LCT attractions. Finally, an illustrative example of LCT attraction evaluation followed by comparative and sensitivity analyses is presented to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality function deployment (QFD) is an effective customer-oriented technique for enhancing healthcare service quality. Implementing QFD, patient requirements (PRs) should be firstly identified and prioritized to satisfy patients' expectation. PRs expressed by human language should be interpreted and converted into technical requirements (TRs) under uncertain situations. The prioritization of TRs should consider patients' bounded rationality ensuring the quality enhancement fit their psychological behaviors. This paper proposes a cloud-support QFD model to improve above phases. First, a best-worst method based PRs prioritizing phase is built to generate reliable and consistent weights of PRs. Then, a translating phase is constructed based on linguistic distribution assessments and asymmetric normal clouds to interpret patients' voice and model the correlations. The phase of prioritizing TRs is proposed based on TODIM to better reflect patients' psychological behaviors. Finally, a case study, sensitive and comparative analyses are provided to show the reliability of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to develop an integrated approach for solving probabilistic linguistic multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. This study first reveals the limitations in the existing methods for probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs). Subsequently, an improved aggregation method and a novel ranking method are developed for addressing PLTSs. The proposed aggregation method is based on the evidence reasoning algorithm and the proposed ranking method that integrates with a three-fold ranking method is based on optimism, neutralism and pessimism decision-making processes. Thus, the proposed approach can straightforwardly and robustly deal with probabilistic linguistic MCDM problems considering decision-makers' psychological preferences. Moreover, to flexibly obtain criteria weights, several models are constructed to adapt to different decision-making situations, in which criteria weight information is incompletely, inconsistently or completely unknown. Finally, a case study on selecting the best investment objective(s) among the member counties of "One Belt, One road" is conducted to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach, followed by a comparative analysis between the existing methods and the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pythagorean fuzzy sets are powerful techniques for modeling vagueness in practice. The aim of this article is to investigate an effective means to aggregate uncertain information and then employ it into settling multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problems within the Pythagorean fuzzy circumstances. To capture the nature of the reality, some special cases should be comprehensively considered. First, though correlation commonly exist among criteria, a deep insight should also be provided into some realistic situations, in which not all the criteria are interrelated to others. Besides, it is more reasonable to take the importance of the input arguments into consideration. Effected by aforementioned point, this article explores a Pythagorean fuzzy partitioned normalized weighted Bonferroni mean (PFPNWBM) operator with the combination of partitioned Bonferroni mean (BM) and normalized weighted BM operators considering Shapley fuzzy measure. Subsequently, in the context of partially known weight information, models are established to identify the optimal Shapley fuzzy measure. Moreover, integrated the PFPNWBM operator with the optimal Shapley fuzzy measure identification model, a Pythagorean fuzzy MCDM approach is designed. Finally, an illustrative example and detailed analyses are performed to demonstrate its feasibility and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to provide a multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM) approach that applies the gray linguistic Bonferroni mean (BM) operator to address the situations where the criterion values take the form of gray linguistic numbers (GLNs) and the criterion weights are known. First, the related operations and comparison method for GLNs are provided. Subsequently, a BM operator and weighted BM operator of GLNs are developed. Then, based on the gray linguistic weighted BM operator, an MCDM approach is proposed. Finally, an illustrative example is given and a comparison analysis is conducted between the proposed approach and other existing methods to demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the developed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In selecting logistics service providers, the evaluation criteria can be easily prioritized and possibly interrelated with each other, and the assessment of alternatives under qualitative criteria is usually accomplished by more than one decision maker. A novel multicriteria decision‐making approach with multihesitant fuzzy linguistic term elements (MHFLTEs) based on the Heronian mean (HM) and prioritized average operators can effectively deal with the problems inherent in such a scenario. Multihesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (MHFLTSs) were proposed on the basis of multihesitant fuzzy sets (MHFSs) and hesitant fuzzy linguistic sets (HFLSs), where each MHFLTE can contain nonconsecutive and repeated linguistic terms. Using MHFLTEs, one decision maker can provide one or several consecutive linguistic terms in evaluating an alternative under one specific criterion, different decision makers’ evaluation values can be collected, and the frequency of a linguistic term in the evaluation information can accord with reality. This paper revises the basic operations and comparison method for MHFLTEs on the basis of the originals and defines some multihesitant fuzzy linguistic HM operators for MHFLTEs to deal with problems in which weight information cannot be accurately established for criteria, but their priorities can be provided in groups or without groups. Finally, the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach are demonstrated through an illustration of a logistics outsourcing problem and a comparison analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-objective optimization by ratio analysis plus the full multiplicative form (MULTIMOORA) is a useful method to apply in multi-criteria decision-making due to the flexibility and robustness it introduces into the decision process. This paper defines several simplified neutrosophic linguistic distance measures and employs a distance-based method to determine criterion weights. Then, an improved MULTIMOORA approach is presented by integrating the simplified neutrosophic linguistic normalized weighted Bonferroni mean and simplified neutrosophic linguistic normalized geometric weighted Bonferroni mean operators as well as a simplified neutrosophic linguistic distance measure. This approach ranks alternatives according to three ordering methods, and then, uses dominance theory to combine the three rankings into a single ranking. Finally, this paper presents a practical case example and conducts a comparative analysis between the proposed approach and existing methods in order to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the developed methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two optimisation models are established to determine the criterion weights in multi-criteria decision-making situations where knowledge regarding the weight information is incomplete and the criterion values are interval neutrosophic numbers. The proposed approach combines interval neutrosophic sets and TOPSIS, and the closeness coefficients are expressed as interval numbers. Furthermore, the relative likelihood-based comparison relations are constructed to determine the ranking of alternatives. A fuzzy cross-entropy approach is proposed to calculate the discrimination measure between alternatives and the absolute ideal solutions, after a transformation operator has been developed to convert interval neutrosophic numbers into simplified neutrosophic numbers. Finally, an illustrative example is provided, and a comparative analysis is conducted between the approach developed in this paper and other existing methods, to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to develop an integrated approach for solving multicriteria group decision‐making problems with multigranular unbalanced hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs). Firstly, a signed distance‐based transformation function is proposed to unify multigranular unbalanced hesitant fuzzy linguistic (HFL) assessments. Secondly, a mathematical programming model based on the maximum consensus is constructed to allocate decision‐makers (DMs)' weights objectively. Thirdly, a new signed distance‐based preference score function is defined to aggregate HFL assessments and determine the weak ranking of alternatives, and a novel preference, indifference, and incomparability test framework is constructed to identify the subtle relations among alternatives. On these bases, a signed distance‐based ORESTE (Organísation, rangement et Synthèse de données relarionnelles, in French) method, in which knowledge regarding criterion values and weights are expressed as multigranular unbalanced HFLTSs, is developed to obtain the ranking of alternatives. Finally, an illustrative example, followed by sensitivity and comparative analyses, is presented to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]