A novel approach to characterizing hesitations in intuitionistic fuzzy numbers

Building upon the concept of D (alpha) operator introduced by Atanassov (1989), this article proposes an improved objective approach and a hybrid approach to operationalize D (alpha) so that the hesitation in an intuitionistic fuzzy number (IFN) can be further refined and characterized. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the features and novelty of the proposed approach compared to existing methods in the literature. The aim is to furnish an effective way to refine hesitations in intuitionistic fuzzy assessments for more reliable and confident decision aids.