An approach to linguistic multi-attribute decision making based on risk preferences of decision makers

An approach is proposed to solve linguistic multi-attribute decision making problems with the risk preference of the decision maker (DM). Firstly, a generalized linguistic term set (GLTS) is defined based on a semantic function to simulate some kinds of linguistic term sets such as the uniform and symmetric linguistic term set (LTS), the non-uniform and asymmetric LTS, the uniform and asymmetric LTS and the non-uniform and symmetric LTS. Then, a method of calculating risk parameters is presented to determine the type of the DM's risk preference. Furthermore, the GLTS has six properties, and the corresponding proofs are given. Finally, a numerical example about the company investment is proposed to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the method given in this paper.