Title
An axiomatic analysis of concordance-discordance relations
Abstract
Outranking methods propose an original way to build a preference relation between alternatives evaluated on several attributes that has a definite ordinal flavor. Indeed, most of them appeal the concordance/non-discordance principle that leads to declaring that an alternative is “superior” to another, if the coalition of attributes supporting this proposition is “sufficiently important” (concordance condition) and if there is no attribute that “strongly rejects” it (non-discordance condition). Such a way of comparing alternatives is rather natural. However, it is well known that it may produce binary relations that do not possess any remarkable property of transitivity or completeness. This explains why the axiomatic foundations of outranking methods have not been much investigated, which is often seen as one of their important weaknesses. This paper uses conjoint measurement techniques to obtain an axiomatic characterization of preference relations that can be obtained on the basis of the concordance/non-discordance principle. It emphasizes their main distinctive feature, i.e. their very crude way to distinguish various levels of preference differences on each attribute. We focus on outranking methods, such as ELECTRE I, that produce a reflexive relation, interpreted as an “at least as good as” preference relation. The results in this paper may be seen as an attempt to give such outranking methods a sound axiomatic foundation based on conjoint measurement.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1016/j.ejor.2008.11.011
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
Multiple criteria analysis,Concordance,Discordance,Outranking methods,Conjoint measurement,Non-transitive preferences
Data mining,Mathematical optimization,Preference relation,Proposition,Mathematical economics,Ordinal number,Axiom,Binary relation,ELECTRE,Completeness (statistics),Mathematics,Transitive relation
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
199
2
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.54
9
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Denis Bouyssou132232.89
Marc Pirlot233339.10