An enhanced even swaps method based on prospect theory with hesitant fuzzy linguistic information and its application to the selection of emergency logistics plans under the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak

The even swaps method considering the trade-offs between criteria is an effective multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method; nevertheless, when implementing it, decision makers are subjected to heavy psychological burdens. The prospect theory can model the psychological characteristics of decision makers to relieve the psychological burdens of decision makers. Thus, it is effective to incorporate the prospect theory into the even swaps method so as to lighten the psychological burdens of decision makers in the even swaps method. Given that the HFLTS is a useful tool to express complex and complete evaluation information, this study aims to propose an even swaps method based on the prospect theory with hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs). To catch this goal, in the even swaps method, the value function of the prospect theory is used to measure the utility changes in the trade-offs between criteria. Then, the swapped values used to rank alternatives under the measuring stick criterion are calculated based on the operations of HFLTSs. A case study about the selection of emergency logistics plans under the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method. The sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis illustrate the reliability and stability of the proposed method.