A method of aggregation in DS/AHP for group decision-making with the non-equivalent importance of individuals in the group

Group decision-making (GDM) is an active area of research within multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). This paper develops the nascent DS/AHP method of MCDM as an effective tool in GDM. Attention here is given to the aggregation of evidence from individual members of a decision-making group who are considered non-equivalent in their importance within the group. A discount rate value is defined for each member of the group depending on their perceived individual levels of importance. This discount rate attenuates the evidence from an individual by re-assigning more value to their concomitant level of ignorance. The adjusted evidence from each group member is then combined to derive the group's collective decision. A small real world GDM problem concerning the choice of university course textbooks is utilised throughout the analysis presented.