A Large Group Decision Making Method Considering Experts’ Non-cooperative Behavior for Investment Selection of Renewable Energy Projects

Abstract

Abstract The rapid expansion of renewable energy has attracted the attention of investors, which makes the evaluation of renewable energy projects a momentous issue. As the investment selection of renewable energy projects requires the joint discussion of experts from different professional backgrounds (such as energy, transportation, construction, economy, environment, etc.), it belongs to the category of large group decision-making (LGDM). Therefore, this paper is devoted to propose a novel LGDM method considering experts’ non-cooperative behavior for investment selection of renewable energy projects. First, considering that the complexity of renewable energy projects makes it difficult for experts to express their views in a single linguistic word, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set is used as the tool for expert evaluation in this paper. Second, since the assessment information provided by experts from different fields are often heterogeneous, a consensus-reaching process with a feedback mechanism is introduced which comprehensively considers three reliable sources: the experts’ trust relationship in the social trust network, the consensus contribution in the subgroup and the opinions’ similarity among experts. Further, to improve the efficiency and rationality of decision-making, an experts’ historical adjustment data-based non-cooperative behavior management method is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness and innovation of the proposed method are verified by a case of renewable energy power generation project investment selection in Qingdao, China and a series of comparative analysis.

Keywords

• Large group decision making
• Consensus reaching process
• Non-cooperative behavior
• Investment selection of renewable energy projects