An ordinal multi-criteria decision-making procedure under imprecise linguistic assessments

Abstract Many decision-making problems such as quality control analysis, market surveys or sensory analysis require ordered qualitative scales, rather than numerical ones. It is very common to assign some cardinal mathematical objects, such as numerical values, intervals of real numbers or fuzzy numbers, to the linguistic terms of ordered qualitative scales. However, when agents perceive that the psychological proximity between each pair of consecutive terms of the scale is not identical, these conversions are meaningless and an ordinal approach to deal with these non-uniform ordered qualitative scales is more appropriate. The aim of this paper is to introduce an ordinal multi-criteria decision-making procedure for ranking alternatives in the setting of ordered qualitative scales that are non-necessarily uniform. The possibility of doubt is also considered, by allowing agents to assign two consecutive terms of the scale when they hesitate. The proposed procedure is applied to a real case study in which nine experts assessed eight wines regarding different criteria.