A method based on the disappointment almost stochastic dominance degree for the multi-attribute decision making with linguistic distributions.

• A method for the MADM with the linguistic distribution is proposed. • The disappointment behaviors of decision makers are considered. • The disappointment almost stochastic dominance relationship is defined. • The properties of the disappointment almost stochastic dominance relationship are discussed. • The disappointment almost stochastic dominance degrees are defined. In the existing studies of the multi-attribute decision making problem (MADM) with linguistic distributions, the decision makers are assumed to be completely rational. However, in real life MADM problems, the decision makers sometimes exhibit the disappointment behaviors over different linguistic assessments. Thus, in this paper a method is proposed for the MADM with the linguistic distributions, in which the disappointment behaviors of decision makers are considered. In the proposed method, the decision matrix with numerical distribution is obtained by the numerical scale model. Based on the defined disappointment almost stochastic dominance (DASD) relationship and DASD degree, the DASD relationship and the DASD degree matrices with respect to all criteria are then calculated, respectively. Next, the ranking results are determined based on the net DASD degrees. Finally, a numerical example and a comparison analysis are provided to discuss the effectiveness of the proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]