Time-series bidirectional adjustable N-soft expert MABAC method and its application for multi-attribute group decision-making

Abstract In hybrid models of soft expert sets, experts express only agreed or disagreed opinions about existing grades. This paper proposes a time-series bidirectional adjustable N -soft expert set model to address the shortcomings of existing models that cannot adjust existing grades to a more reasonable state or describe decision problems involving different times. Firstly, this model can explain the experts’ uncertain opinions and make positive or negative adjustments about existing grades. Secondly, the model contains information about time, describes dynamic multi-attribute group decision-making problems and explores objects’ changes and developments over time. And some related operations and propositions are derived. In addition, a new method called the bidirectional adjustable N -soft expert MABAC (multi-attributive border approximation area comparison) is proposed. On the one hand, the proposed method uses deviation maximizing and exponential decay methods to determine the time weights, ensuring the reliability of the time weights. On the other hand, it ranks objects based on their distances from an approximate boundary region, limiting the unconditional compensation among attribute values. Finally, this paper presents an example to verify its effectiveness and reliability by results analysis, sensitivity analysis, and comparison analysis.