Pairwise judgments consistency impact on quality of multi-criteria group decision-making with AHP

Abstract

The scope of this research encompasses issues associated with group decision making (GDM) as the most challenging process which entails various viewpoints and preferences of individuals that must be taken into consideration and somehow combined into one meaningful outcome. When GDM is taken into consideration, the AHP seems to be a particularly attractive methodology. From the perspective of its applications, an existing research gap has been identified and examined in this research paper. Thus, the inconsistency of judgments impact on priority vector quality has been examined from the perspective of group decision making. Examination results generalize to the synthesized pairwise comparison matrix that is obtained on the basis of individual pairwise comparison matrices for all group members. The examination process has proceeded with the application of Monte Carlo simulations coded and executed in Wolfram Mathematica Software. Having in mind that a consistency index for the PCM denoting group preferences cannot be greater than the consistency index of the most inconsistent individual PCM it became possible to designate the credibility of the priority vector for the group on the basis of the most inconsistent individual PCM. It is emphasized that thus far only a few papers have dealt with the problem concerning the relation between a level of the pairwise judgments inconsistency and the degree of possible estimation errors for established vector of priority ratios. This research paper overcomes limitations of other examinations which distinguishes it from other papers and emphasizes its novelty.