Evaluating public transport service quality using picture fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and linear assignment model

Abstract Group decision-making on a public service problem is often biased by untrustworthy responses of the participants, which affects negatively the outcome of the procedure. To eliminate this problem, the state-of-the-art methodologies apply fuzzy sets, generally within the frames of hybrid methodologies. The objective of the recent paper is to introduce a new hybrid model based on picture fuzzy sets and linear assignment and its first real-world application on a public transport development problem. The advantage of the proposed methodology is that it simultaneously considers the indeterminacy level of respondent evaluations on decision alternatives, and applies linear assignment to avoid subjectivity in responses. With the aim of testing the reliability of the new methodology, the results are compared with the generally applied intuitionistic fuzzy Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution model. The comparative results have shown that the final outcomes of the proposed method are very similar to the well-proven reference technique, thus the hybrid picture fuzzy AHP-linear assignment model has been validated.