Prioritizing Preference of Criteria Based on Hierarchy Structure

Abstract

The analytic hierarchical process (AHP) is a method to obtain the priority weights of alterna- tives when a decision maker evaluates importance of the criteria and the alternatives under each criterion. It can handle an intuitive judgment by using a pairwise comparison technique to evaluate the criteria and alternatives. However, the criteria often relate to our feelings and value systems, and it is not easy for a decision maker to compare them and give judgments on them. Hence, we concern deriving preference, which is represented by the importance of criteria in this paper. We propose a method to obtain the im- portance of criteria through the alternatives indirectly that are familiar to the decision maker, instead of forcing him/her to evaluate them in the conventional AHP directly. Therefore, we rebuilt the hierarchical structure using the alternatives that he/she knows well and the criteria that represent his/her preferences. The decision maker does not only find the best alternative but also understands his/her preferences on ambiguous concepts.