Arithmetic Aggregation Operators for Interval-valued Intuitionistic Linguistic Variables and Application to Multi-attribute Group Decision Making

Abstract

The intuitionistic linguistic set (ILS) is an extension of linguisitc variable. To overcome the drawback of using single real number to represent membership degree and non-membership degree for ILS, the concept of interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic set (IVILS) is introduced through representing the membership degree and non-membership degree with intervals for ILS in this paper. The operation law, score function, accuracy function , and certainty function for interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic varibales (IVILVs) are defined. Hereby a lexicographic method is proposed to rank the IVILVs. Then, three kinds of interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic arithmetic average operators are defined, including the interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic weighted arithmetic average (IVILWAA) operator, interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic ordered weighted arithmetic (IVILOWA) operator, and interval-valued intuitionistic linguistic hybrid arithmetic (IVILHA) operator, and their desirable properties are also discussed. Based on the IVILWAA and IVILHA operators, two methods are proposed for solving multi-attribute group decision making problems with IVILVs. Finally, an investment selection example is illustrated to demonstrate the applicability and validity of the methods proposed in this paper.