The Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Theory of Measurement

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a decision-making procedure widely used in management for establishing priorities in multicriteria decision problems. Underlying the AHP is the theory of ratio-scale measures developed in psychophysics since the middle of the last century. It is, however, well known that classical ratio-scaling approaches have several problems. We reconsider the AHP in the light of the modern theory of measurement based on the so-called separable representations recently axiomatized in mathematical psychology. We provide various theoretical and empirical results on the extent to which the AHP can be considered a reliable decision-making procedure in terms of the modern theory of subjective measurement.

• 저널Management Science · 56(4) · 699–711
• 토픽Multi-Criteria Decision Making · Management Science and Operations Research
• DOI10.1287/mnsc.1090.1123
• 저자Michele Bernasconi, Christine Choirat, Raffaello Seri