Multicriteria Decision Making Based on Generalized Maclaurin Symmetric Means with Multi-Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Information

In multicriteria decision making (MCDM), multi-hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (MHFLTSs) can eliminate the limitations of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) and hesitant fuzzy linguistic sets (HFLSs), and emphasize the importance of a repeated linguistic term (LT). Meanwhile, there is usually an interrelation between criteria. The Maclaurin symmetric mean (MSM) operator can capture the interrelationships among multi-input arguments. The purpose of this paper is to integrate MHFLTSs with MSM operators and to solve MCDM problems. Firstly, we develop the generalized MSM operator for MHFLTSs (MHFLGMSM), the generalized geometric MSM operator for MHFLTSs (MHFLGGMSM), the weighted generalized MSM operator for MHFLTSs (WMHFLGMSM) and the weighted generalized geometric MSM operator for MHFLTSs (WMHFLGGMSM), respectively. Then, we discuss their properties and some special cases. Further, we present a novel method to deal with MCDM problems with the MHFLTSs based on the proposed MSM operators. Finally, an illustrative example about how to select the best third-party logistics service provider is supplied to demonstrate the practicality and reliability of the proposed approaches in comparison with some existing approaches.