Using Vector Random Linguistic Variables to Manage Consistency and Consensus in Linguistic Group Decision-Making for Public Project

With the development of political democratization, linguistic group decision-making for public project (LGDMPP) is playing more and more important role in the modern social activities. This paper introduces the fuzzy preference relation based on vector random linguistic variables (VRLVs-FPR) to improve the accuracy and flexibility of linguistic preference relation (LPR) in managing LGDMPP. First, an intact linguistic evaluation scale (ILES) is presented to directly describe the decision-maker’s personalized consciousness. Based on this, for depicting different kinds of hesitance in decision-makers’ expressions, we put forward the vector random linguistic variable (VRLV) and apply it into the pairwise comparisons of alternatives in order to get the VRLVs-FPR. Furthermore, a consistency improving method is given to manage the consistency of VRLVs-FPR and a consensus improving method is given to manage the consensus process of LGDMPP. Finally, a LGDMPP example of government’s investment project selection illustrates the use of new methods proposed in this paper, where the in-depth comparison and discussion verify the effectiveness of them.