Abstract
The theory of fuzzy sets considers that everything exhibits some elasticity and is a matter of degree. When fuzzy numbers are used to evaluate the judgements of decision makers (DMs) in pairwise comparisons of alternatives following the analytic hierarchy process, the flexibility experienced by DMs has been exhibited. In order to capture this aspect of flexibility, it is important to know how to realize the flexibility degree of fuzzy numbers and further present a method of realizing its quantification. In this paper, a definition of the flexibility degree of fuzzy numbers is proposed. Some formulas are proposed to quantify the flexibility and rigidity degrees of interval numbers, triangular fuzzy numbers, and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. A group decision making (GDM) model is developed under the consideration of the flexibility of DMs. By considering the effects of the applied scale and the reciprocal relation, the flexibility degree of interval multiplicative reciprocal comparison matrices is further defined, which is used to evaluate the flexibility degree of the DM involved in the decision process. An RD-IOWGA operator is proposed to aggregate individual interval multiplicative reciprocal matrices by associating more importance to that with less flexibility. A new algorithm is shown to solve GDM problems with interval multiplicative reciprocal preference relations. Numerical studies are carried out to illustrate the new definitions and offer some comparative analysis. The observations reveal that the developed consensus method can be used to model the GDM with a dominant position.