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Analytical hierarchy process: revolution and evolution

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Abstract

The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a reliable, rigorous, and robust method for eliciting and quantifying subjective judgments in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). Despite the many benefits, the complications of the pairwise comparison process and the limitations of consistency in AHP are challenges that have been the subject of extensive research. AHP revolutionized how we resolve complex decision problems and has evolved substantially over three decades. We recap this evolution by introducing five new hybrid methods that combine AHP with popular weighting methods in MCDM. The proposed methods are described and evaluated systematically by implementing a widely used example in the AHP literature. We show that (i) the hybrid methods proposed in this study require fewer expert judgments than AHP but deliver the same ranking, (ii) a higher degree of involvement in the hybrid voting AHP methods leads to higher acceptability of the results when experts are also the decision-makers, and (iii) experts are more motivated and attentive in methods requiring fewer pairwise comparisons and less interaction, resulting in a more efficient process and higher acceptability.

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Acknowledgment

Dr. Madjid Tavana is grateful for the partial support he received from the Czech Science Foundation (GAˇCR19-13946S) for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Systems and Analytics Department, Distinguished Chair of Business Analytics, La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA, 19141, USA

    Madjid Tavana

  2. Business Information Systems Department, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Madjid Tavana

  3. Department of Mathematics, Semnan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Semnan, Iran

    Mehdi Soltanifar

  4. Faculty of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Francisco J. Santos-Arteaga

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  1. Madjid Tavana
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  2. Mehdi Soltanifar
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  3. Francisco J. Santos-Arteaga
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Tavana, M., Soltanifar, M. & Santos-Arteaga, F.J. Analytical hierarchy process: revolution and evolution. Ann Oper Res 326, 879–907 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04432-2

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