An integrated and discriminative approach for group decision-making with probabilistic linguistic information

Group decision-making (GDM) is a complex process. The diversity, discrimination, and inevitable uncertainty due to human intervention characterize such problems that add to this complexity. To circumvent this challenge, there is an urge for an appropriate knowledge representation and decision-making approaches. The present paper is concerned with a prescriptive approach to GDM that can aid a group of decision-makers (DMs) to arrive at a decision. To this end, the recent concept of probabilistic linguistic term set is utilized. The discrimination among the alternatives, as in the real world, are mimicked using an integrated framework that adopts CRITIC and variance methods for attribute weight calculation, Gini index for calculating the weights of DMs, Maclaurin symmetric mean for aggregating preferences, and weighted distance-based approximation for prioritization of alternatives. A real-world problem on electric bike selection illustrates the usefulness of the proposed work. Finally, comparative analysis with extant methods demonstrates the technical results, and it is inferred that the proposed work is (i) highly consistent (from Spearman correlation) and (ii) produces broad rank values (from standard deviation) that could be efficiently discriminated for rational decision-making and backup management during critical situations.