Single-valued neutrosophic relations and their application to factors affecting oil prices

The recent boom of economic activities has escalated the demand for oil that eventually will affect its prices. However, oil prices are difficult to predict because most of the factors affecting oil prices are vague and intangible. The challenges in predicting oil prices urgently require a novel approach where issues related to multiple-factors, uncertainty, and periodicity can be addressed. The authors propose the single-valued neutrosophic relations based decision-making method inspired by the three memberships of neutrosophic sets, and amplitude and periodicity of complex numbers. The proposed method is applied to the case of oil prices where six factors affecting oil prices and six benchmarks measuring oil prices are employed. This new method combines with complex neutrosophic numbers and algebraic relations, and can suggest the most influential factor that affects oil prices. Considering the periodicity of 24 months, computation results verify the 'global economic rate' as the most influential factor that affects the prices of oil. The main contribution of this study is the development of a neutrosophic relations-based decision-making method to suggest the most influential factor that affects oil prices. The result provides evidence on the feasibility of the proposed method in suggesting the influential factors that affect oil prices.