A Hybrid Approach of Interval Neutrosophic Vague Sets and DEMATEL with New Linguistic Variable

• Main Authors: Ashraf Al-Quran, Hazwani Hashim, Lazim Abdullah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-02-01
• Series: Symmetry
• Subjects: invs; dematel; linguistic variable
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/2/275

Nowadays, real world problems are complicated because they deal with uncertainty and incomplete information. Obviously, such problems cannot be solved by a single technique because of the multiple perspectives that may arise. Currently, the combination of DEMATEL and the neutrosophic environment are still new and not fully explored. Previous studies of DEMATEL and this neutrosophic environment have been carried out based on numerical values to represent a new scale. Until now, little importance has been placed on the development of a linguistic variable for DEMATEL. It is important to develop a new linguistic variable to represent opinions based on human experience. Therefore, to fill this gap, the concept of Interval Neutrosophic Vague Sets (INVS) has been extended to the linguistic variable that can be used in the decision-making process. The INVS is useful tool to deal with uncertainty and incomplete information. Additionally, the advantages of the linguistic variable of INVS allows the greater range of value for membership functions. This study proposes a new framework for INVS and DEMATEL. In addition, a case study on the quality of hospital service has been evaluated to demonstrate the proposed approach. Finally, a comparative analysis to check the feasibility of the proposed method is presented. It demonstrates that different methods produce different relations and levels of importance. This is due to the inclusion of the INVS linguistic variable.