A collective choice method based on individual preferences relational systems (p.r.s.)

In group decision-making literature, several procedures are proposed in order to establish a collective preference from the different individual ones. The majority of these procedures, however, reveal that the individual preferences are always expressed in total pre-orders (or ranking). Indeed, until now very few have considered individual preferences which are expressed in partial pre-orders or, more generally, in preferences relational systems (p.r.s.). Moreover, many of these procedures generate collective preferences which are expressed in total pre-orders (ranking decision-making problematic). The efforts reported in the literature to develop procedures which treat other decision-making problematics - such as choice problematic - remain insufficient. In this paper, we propose a method which would determine from individual p.r.s. at least one collective subset containing the "best" alternatives. Each of these collective subsets results from the exploitation - according to the choice problematic - of a collective p.r.s. obtained from the aggregation of the individual p.r.s. Furthermore, each collective p.r.s. has two main characteristics: (i) it is at a minimum distance from all individual p.r.s. and (ii) it takes into account the members' relative importance. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.