Group decision-making framework using complex Pythagorean fuzzy information

This paper contributes to the expanding literature on VIKOR, a well-known multi-criteria decision-making technique. It is abundantly used to find the compromise solution regarding some significant criteria under different models. The general VIKOR methodology implements the principle that a recommended response must be a feasible solution which is nearest to positive ideal solution having maximum group utility and minimum individual regret. In this article, we propose a new strategy to address multi-criteria group decision-making problems named complex Pythagorean fuzzy VIKOR (CPF-VIKOR) method. It is designed to handle a great deal of vagueness and hesitation which are often present in human decisions. The CPF-VIKOR method allows the linguistic terms to express individual opinions of experts about the performance of alternatives and the weights of the criteria. We combine the individual judgments of experts with the help of complex Pythagorean fuzzy weighted averaging operator. Further, we compute the ranking measure with the help of group utility and regret measures by adjusting the weight of strategy of maximum group utility within the unit interval. We sort the alternatives in an ascending order relative to group utility measure and individual regret measure. Moreover, we demonstrate our proposed method with the help of a flow chart and two numerical examples: one for the selection of the most beneficial renewable energy project in Spain and another for the selection of the most suitable logistic village location in Turkey. Finally, we present the comparative analysis of our proposed method with the CPF-TOPSIS method to prove its validity.