AN INTERVAL-VALUED HESITANT FUZZY DEMATEL METHOD AND ITS APPLICATION IN GROUP DECISION MAKING

Decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is a commonly used method for Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The method was primarily developed to analyze real world problems using real valued crisp data. However, in practice, it is often hard to acquire precise information and that is why the values are increasingly expressed as fuzzy sets or fuzzy numbers. A considerable number of studies have been devoted to the fuzzy extension of the DEMATEL method, but none provided the hesitant fuzzy extensions, which proves to be useful for the solution of various real world problems especially in a group decision making environment. This paper addresses this issue and proposes an interval-valued hesitant fuzzy approach to DEMATEL and provides an illustrative example.