Multi-Attribute Decision-Making: Scaling Issues in Pairwise Comparison Approaches Based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been the subject of intensive discussions over the past decades. The multiplicative AHP (MAHP) was developed to deal with issues regarding the scale and aggregation procedure but has never achieved the same popularity. Both methods represent pairwise comparison processes (PCPs) based on a numerical scale with associated verbal definitions. However, they process the comparisons differently, leading to different results. This paper uses an empirical study to examine whether the original AHP’s results are generally more acceptable than MAHP’s. This leads to a review of principles relating to different scales based on comparative judgments, and finally, a revised scale parameter for MAHP is proposed. The participants in the empirical study are presented with the results of this alternative MAHP (A-MAHP). The results reveal that the A-MAHP — overcoming some theoretical issues discussed in this paper — should be considered for practical use. Thus, an innovative finding is that A-MAHP may serve as a proxy for AHP and accommodate users accustomed to this well-known method. Finally, perspectives are set out for future work.