Personalized individual semantics based on consistency in hesitant linguistic group decision making with comparative linguistic expressions

In decision making problems, decision makers may prefer to use more flexible linguistic expressions instead of using only one linguistic term to express their preferences. The recent proposals of hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms sets (HFLTSs) are developed to support the elicitation of comparative linguistic expressions in hesitant decision situations. In group decision making (GDM), the statement that words mean different things for different people has been highlighted and it is natural that a word should be defined by individual semantics described by different numerical values. Considering this statement in hesitant linguistic decision making, the aim of this paper is to personalize individual semantics in the hesitant GDM with comparative linguistic expressions to show the individual difference in understanding the meaning of words. In our study, the personalized individual semantics are carried out by the fuzzy envelopes of HFLTSs based on the personalized numerical scales of linguistic term set. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.