A Consensus-Based Best–Worst Method for Linguistic Multi-Criteria Group Decision-Making

Labella, Álvaro; García-Zamora, Diego; Dutta, Bapi; Martínez, Luis

doi:10.15388/26-INFOR637

Informatica

A Consensus-Based Best–Worst Method for Linguistic Multi-Criteria Group Decision-Making

Álvaro Labella

Diego García-Zamora Bapi Dutta Luis Martínez

https://doi.org/10.15388/26-INFOR637

Pub. online: 3 August 2026 Type: Research Article

Open Access

Received
1 May 2026

Accepted
1 June 2026

Published
3 August 2026

Abstract

Determining criteria importance is a crucial task in multi-criteria decision-making problems, and the Best-Worst Method (BWM) has emerged as an effective weighting technique due to its reduced number of pairwise comparisons. Although BWM has been extended to handle group decision-making and linguistic information, existing approaches do not adequately address disagreements among evaluators, which may lead to dissatisfaction with the resulting criteria weights. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a consensus-based BWM for linguistic multi-criteria group decision-making. The proposed approach obtains consensual collective weights by minimally modifying the evaluators’ initial linguistic preferences. The resulting solution can support moderators and evaluators during consensus-reaching processes by facilitating the identification of disagreements and the generation of appropriate recommendations. The proposal is developed within the 2-tuple linguistic framework and provides both numerical and linguistic representations of the resulting weights. In addition, a novel stochastic consistency index is introduced to assess the reliability of evaluators’ preferences. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposal are illustrated through a real-world case study and analysed by means of comparative and sensitivity analyses.

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Biographies

Labella Álvaro

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2764-1011

alabella@ujaen.es

Á. Labella holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Jaén where he currently works as an associate professor and researcher in the SINBAD2 group. His research focuses on decision-making, computing with words, and software application development.

García-Zamora Diego

dgzamora@ujaen.es

D. García-Zamora received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Granada and he is doctor in information and communication technologies from the University of Jaén. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Jaén and a researcher in the SINBAD2 research group. His work focuses on decision-making, aggregation operators, fuzzy logic, and optimization.

Dutta Bapi

bdutta@ujaen.es

B. Dutta is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the University of Jaén. His research focuses on decision-making, soft computing, simulation, optimization, and machine learning, with particular emphasis on developing advanced computational models and methodologies to address complex real-world problems.

Martínez Luis

martin@ujaen.es

L. Martínez is currently full professor with the Computer Science Department of the University of Jaén. His current research interests include multi-criteria decision-making, fuzzy logic-based systems, computing with words, and recommender systems.

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Open access article under the CC BY license.

Keywords

Multi-criteria group decision-making consensus-reaching process Best-Worst Method 2-tuple linguistic model linear optimization

Funding

Bapi Dutta gratefully acknowledges the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the Spanish State Research Agency through the Ramón y Cajal Research Grant (RYC2023-045020-I).

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