Consistency issues in the best worst method

Measurements and thresholds

Journal Article (2020)
Author(s)

F. Liang (TU Delft - Transport and Logistics)

Matteo Brunelli (Università di Trento)

J Rezaei (TU Delft - Transport and Logistics)

Research Group
Transport and Logistics
Copyright
© 2020 F. Liang, Matteo Brunelli, J. Rezaei
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2019.102175
More Info
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Publication Year
2020
Language
English
Copyright
© 2020 F. Liang, Matteo Brunelli, J. Rezaei
Research Group
Transport and Logistics
Volume number
96
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Abstract

The Best-Worst Method (BWM) uses ratios of the relative importance of criteria in pairs based on the assessment done by decision-makers. When a decision-maker provides the pairwise comparisons in BWM, checking the acceptable inconsistency, to ensure the rationality of the assessments, is an important step. Although both the original and the extended versions of BWM have proposed several consistency measurements, there are some deficiencies, including: (i) the lack of a mechanism to provide immediate feedback to the decision-maker regarding the consistency of the pairwise comparisons being provided, (ii) the inability to consider the ordinal consistency into account, and (iii) the lack of consistency thresholds to determine the reliability of the results. To deal with these problems, this study starts by proposing a cardinal consistency measurement to provide immediate feedback, called the input-based consistency measurement, after which an ordinal consistency measurement is proposed to check the coherence of the order of the results (weights) against the order of the pairwise comparisons provided by the decision-maker. Finally, a method is proposed to balance cardinal consistency ratio under ordinal-consistent and ordinal-inconsistent conditions, to determine the thresholds for the proposed and the original consistency ratios.