A Minimum-Cost Consensus Model in Social Networks Derived From Uncertain Preferences

The influence of mutual interaction behaviors on the opinions and consensus process has gradually emerged due to the information sharing in social networks. Currently, the cost of making individual decisions and the similarity between experts' decision behaviors are relatively less addressed in the social network decision process. Therefore, in this study, a consensus approach with the trust relationships and adjustment cost is proposed to fill in such a gap. The method is divided into three stages: 1) trust propagation; 2) weight allocation; and 3) consensus reaching. In the trust propagation phase, uninorm is extended to the uncertain theory and employed in the transmission and integration problems of trust relationships. In the weight allocation stage, the comprehensive weight is assigned based on network structure and strength of relationship. In the consensus-reaching process, two levels of consensus are considered: 1) consensus among individuals and 2) consensus between individuals and the collective group, and chance-constrained programming models are constructed to obtain collective decision opinions. Moreover, a comparative analysis is performed to clarify the effectiveness and advancement of the proposed consensus method.

Automated summary

The study proposes a consensus approach with trust relationships and adjustment cost to address the lack of attention to individual decision costs and similarity in expert decision behaviors in the social network decision process. The method consists of three stages: trust propagation, weight allocation, and consensus reaching. Uncertain theory is employed in trust propagation while comprehensive weight allocation is based on network structure and relationship strength. Consensus is considered at both individual and collective group levels using chance-constrained programming models. Comparative analysis is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and advancement of the proposed method.