The weighting method's impact on the weighting process in decision making problems

Assigning values to weights in a multi-criteria decision making problem is critical, since it introduces the decision maker's perception and preference over the importance and value of the decision problem's criteria and alternatives, respectively. This paper investigates theoretically and experimentally the impact of the applied weighting method on the decision maker's determination of weights. The research develops a methodology to evaluate the impact that a weighting method may have on the decision maker's attitude concerning the assignment of weighting values, comprising; a) a psychometric test revealing the decision maker's attitude against risk and ambiguity with a new modeling approach based on a psychometric function and b) an assignment of weighting values by the decision maker with different weighting methods. The results demonstrate that the expression and particularly the ranking of decision maker's attitudinal preference are affected by the weighting method and this impact is measurable through the proposed methodology.