MAGDM method based on generalized hesitant fuzzy TODIM and cumulative prospect theory and application to recruitment of university researchers

Abstract

The recruitment of university researchers can be considered a multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) problem. MAGDM is a familiar issue with uncertainty and fuzziness in the decision-making field. Generalized hesitation fuzzy numbers (GHFNs) as a new expanded form of hesitation fuzzy numbers (HFNs) can better express the uncertain information in MAGDM. The TODIM is a very classical and widely used method to deal with the MAGDM issue. In this paper, we integrate cumulative prospect theory (CPT) into TODIM to consider not only decision makers’ subjective risk preferences but also their confidence level to obtain more reasonable choices under risk conditions. Therefore, we propose the GHF CPT-TODIM approach to tackle the MAGDM issue. Meanwhile, in the GHF environment, it is proposed to use the volatility of attribute information (entropy weighting method) to obtain the importance of attributes, obtain the unknown attribute weight, and enhance the rationality of weight information. Finally, the validity and usefulness of the technique are verified by applying the GHF CPT-TODIM technique to the recruitment of university researchers and comparing it with the existing GHF MAGDM method, which offers a new way to solve the MAGDM problem with GHFNs.