Probabilistic Linguistic Approaches in Group Decision Making

Probabilistic linguistic approaches address the inherent uncertainty and hesitation in group decision making by combining linguistic evaluations with probability information. Unlike traditional fuzzy or vague linguistic models, these approaches allow experts to assign multiple linguistic terms to each criterion, each accompanied by a probability reflecting its relative importance or likelihood. This framework supports richer information elicitation and preserves nuances in expert judgment. Recent developments have seen the introduction of new aggregation operators, entropy-based measures and feedback-driven consensus models that capture both consensus and divergence among decision makers. Methods such as probabilistic linguistic VIKOR, ELECTRE and CODAS have been adapted to this environment, yielding compromise solutions that balance overall group utility against individual regret. Extensions to interval-valued probabilistic linguistic term sets and rough-set-based linguistic representations further enhance the capacity to model incomplete and approximate information. Applications span risk assessment in public health, sustainable supply chain management, renewable energy selection and investment portfolio decisions, demonstrating global relevance and practical impact in fields that require collective expertise under uncertainty.

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Probabilistic Linguistic Approaches in Group Decision Making publication trend

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Technical terms

Probabilistic Linguistic Term Set (PLTS): A structure for expressing uncertain linguistic evaluations where each term is associated with a probability reflecting its likelihood of occurrence.

χ-linguistic set: An extension of PLTS incorporating rough set-based measures of membership, credibility and approximation directly from empirical data.

VIKOR method: A multi-criteria decision-making technique that identifies compromise solutions by maximising group utility and minimising individual regret.

Interval-valued PLTS (IVPLTS): A generalisation of PLTS where probabilities are represented as intervals to capture implicit hesitation in expert judgments.

PL-CODAS method: A probabilistic linguistic adaptation of the CODAS model that uses a novel score function and distance-based ranking under uncertain linguistic information.

References

1. χ-linguistic sets and its application for the linguistic multi-attribute group decision making. Artificial Intelligence Review (2024).
2. Probabilistic Linguistic VIKOR Method to Evaluate Green Supply Chain Initiatives. Sustainability (2017).
3. Entropy Measures of Probabilistic Linguistic Term Sets. International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems (2018).
4. Probabilistic Linguistic Power Aggregation Operators for Multi-Criteria Group Decision Making. Symmetry (2017).
5. The application of probabilistic linguistic CODAS method based on new score function in multi-criteria decision-making. Computational and Applied Mathematics (2021).
6. Therapeutic Schedule Evaluation for Brain-Metastasized Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer with A Probabilistic Linguistic ELECTRE II Method. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2018).
7. A Group Decision Framework for Renewable Energy Source Selection under Interval-Valued Probabilistic linguistic Term Set. Energies (2020).
8. A Consensus Model of Probabilistic Linguistic Preference Relations in Group Decision Making Based on Feedback Mechanism. IEEE Access (2019).