An Integrated Decision-Making Method Based on Neutrosophic Numbers for Investigating Factors of Coastal Erosion

A Bonferroni mean considering Shapley fuzzy measure under hesitant bipolar-valued neutrosophic set environment for an investment decision

Bonferroni mean (BM) operators have been established as a powerful tool for handling the interrelationship between the input arguments under various decision-making information. However, the existing BM operators do not take into account the overall interaction among decision makers or criteria. To overcome this limitation, this study considers the Shapley fuzzy measure (SFM) with the normalized weighted BM (NWBM) operator under a neutrosophic environment. In addition, the current research ignores the bipolarity and hesitancy during decision elicitations, resulting in the imprecise decision results. In this paper, the hesitant bipolar-valued neutrosophic set (HBNS) which is the extension of hesitant fuzzy set and bipolar neutrosophic set is employed. The main focus of this paper is in the development of an aggregation operator for HBNS. Based on the literature review, we would like to fill in the gaps by developing a hesitant bipolar-valued neutrosophic Shapley NWBM (HBN-SNWBM) operator where the overall interaction among decision makers can be considered. Besides that, a three-phase decision making framework is also proposed to show the applicability of the proposed aggregation operator to the real-world decision problems. The HBN-SNWBM operator and the decision making framework are applied to two examples of investment selection where evaluations are implemented using the proposed aggregations that based upon hesitant bipolar-valued neutrosophic sets. In the first example, it is found that a weapon company is the best alternative for investment followed by a food company. Sensitivity of parameters of the aggregation operator is also analysed and it is found that the ranking results are consistent despite of different parameter values used. This verifies the insensitivity of p,q parameters in the developed aggregation operator. The proposed decision making framework and hesitant bipolar-valued neutrosophic sets would be a great significance for the practical implementation of the aggregation operators.

The Key Success Factors for Attracting Foreign Investment in the Post-Epidemic Era

The global economy has been hit by the unexpected COVID-19 outbreak, and foreign investment has been seen as one of the most important tools to boost the economy. However, in the highly uncertain post-epidemic era, determining how to attract foreign investment is the key to revitalizing the economy. What are the important factors for governments to attract investment, and how to improve them? This will be an important decision in the post-epidemic era. Therefore, this study develops a novel decision-making model to explore the key factors in attracting foreign investment. The model first uses fuzzy Delphi to explore the key factors of attracting foreign investment in the post-epidemic era, and then uses DEMATEL to construct the causal relationships among these factors. To overcome the uncertainty of various information sources and inconsistent messages from decision-makers, this study combined neutrosophic set theory to conduct quantitative analysis. The results of the study show that the model is suitable for analyzing the key factors of investment attraction in the post-epidemic period. Based on the results of the study, we also propose strategies that will help the relevant policy-making departments to understand the root causes of the problem and to formulate appropriate investment strategies in advance. In addition, the model is also used for comparative analysis, which reveals that this novel approach can integrate more incomplete information and present expert opinions in a more objective way.

Bipolar neutrosophic DEMATEL for urban sustainable development

Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in integrating the neutrosophic sets with multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. Previous literature have suggested the integration of neutrosophic set with the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method, in which the three memberships of neutrosophic set are utilized to solve problems that are characterized by non-deterministic information. Differently from the neutrosophic DEMATEL, which directly used three independent memberships, this paper proposes bipolar neutrosophic DEMATEL (Bipolar NS-DEMATEL) of which the positive and negative of truth, indeterminate and false memberships of bipolar neutrosophic set are introduced to enhance decision in urban sustainable development. Three criteria and fifteen sub-criteria of urban sustainable development are the main MCDM structures that need to be solved using the proposed method. A group of experts were invited to provide rating of performance values of sub-criteria of urban sustainable development problem using a bipolar neutrosophic linguistic scale. The proposed Bipolar NS-DEMATEL is applied to segregate the sub-criteria of urban sustainable development into cause and effect groups. In addition, the network relation map is drawn to observe the interaction among the sub-criteria. The Bipolar NS-DEMATEL suggests that air quality (SC12) is the most important sub-criteria in managing urban sustainable development. The result also unveils that the sub-criterion safety (SC21) is impacted and influenced by other sub-criteria. The identification of sub-criteria in accordance with their net causer and net receiver would help the authority in prioritizing sub-criteria that may directly be affected by urban development.

A Hybrid MCDM Model to Select Optimal Hosts of Variety Shows in the Social Media Era

The selection of the optimal variety show hosts is a key to television stations. However, no study has a deal with this issue. In this paper, a hybrid multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) model based on the fuzzy Delphi method, decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), analytic network process (ANP), and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to choose optimal hosts of variety shows for television stations in the social media era was developed. The fuzzy Delphi method was taken as a screening tool for the selection criteria of variety show hosts. Then, DEMATEL was applied to verify the interdependencies between the perspectives. According to the interdependencies, ANP was employed to obtain weights. Finally, TOPSIS ranked the alternatives. The selection criteria were gathered from previous researches and discussions with senior executives of television stations. By the fuzzy Delphi method, 12 criteria were identified. Based on the past study and consultations with four senior executives, we classified 12 essential criteria into four perspectives to develop the hierarchy for the variety show host selection. Under the hierarchy base on four perspectives and 12 criteria, managers of television stations could select the optimal variety show hosts more effectively. The usability and efficiency of the proposed model were also considered by a case study. We offered a distinct contribution to the prior studies by providing a model in the variety show host selection field. In the context of social media competition, this study also added the selection criteria from Internet celebrities.