Heterogeneous Group Consensus Method With Three-Way Decisions Based on Fuzzy Social Networks and Manipulation Behaviors Under Multiscale Information Systems

A multiscale information system (MSIS) is a kind of information system that divides data into different scales according to the thickness of different granularities, which solves the limitation of traditional single-scale information systems. In view of the importance on different data types of interval values, intuitionistic fuzzy numbers, hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets, and fuzzy preference relations in coping with uncertain decision-making issues and the challenges of current research on heterogeneous decision-making issues under MSISs, this article studies such heterogeneous decision-making issues based on a fuzzy sociometric matrix (FSM) in MSISs. The manipulative behavior (MB) is a method of assigning behavioral weights for sequential attitude modeling in order to achieve a goal. In view of this, this article develops a heterogeneous group consensus (HGC) method under MSISs based on fuzzy social networks and MBs, i.e., the MSIS-MB-HGC method. The method aims to propose a consensus reaching process (CRP) to deal with heterogeneous group decision-making problems. First, a method to obtain an MSIS with different data types is constructed. Then, various data types are converted to fuzzy connection numbers in a uniform way. Subsequently, an FSM is constructed being used to represent the trust relations between decision makers. Furthermore, the three-way decision is considered for the consensus feedback process. Finally, the utility and superiority of the constructed MSIS-MB-HGC method in CRP are further confirmed through comparative analysis with the existing related works by a real case.