Multicriteria Decision-Making Under High-Level Uncertainty In Tourism: Z-Numbers Based Approaches

The objective of this paper is to study the applicability and effectiveness of the decision-making models in the tourism sector under high-level uncertainty, formalized by Z-information. The topicality of this issue is significantly increased after the outbreak of the pandemic. Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models applied in the tourism area are partially solving this problem. But in these models, researchers are not paying due attention to the reliability of the information. One approach available for the formalization of such high-level uncertainty is the use of bi-component Z-number = (A, B). Components of the Z-numbers are expressed by perception-based fuzzy numbers. Part A defines the value of the uncertain variable and part B defines the confidence in this value. This approach allows considering the fuzzy-probabilistic nature of the information used for decision-making in tourism. In the paper, we are describing in detail the Z-numbers-based approach for the tourism destination selection task solution under high-level uncertainty. The model has been developed for the water sports tourism destination selection in Turkey. Initial information for model construction was derived via surveys. For the solution of this task, the Z-TOPSIS method is used. Results of the task solution illustrate the efficiency of the Z-numbers-based model for destination selection and the applicability of the approach for other MCDM tasks in tourism.