Journal of the Operational Research Society

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tjor20

Managing public opinion in consensus-reaching

processes for large-scale group decision-making
problems

Guo-Rui Yang, Xueqing Wang, Ru-Xi Ding, Jingjun (David) Xu & Meng-Nan Li

To cite this article: Guo-Rui Yang, Xueqing Wang, Ru-Xi Ding, Jingjun (David) Xu &
Meng-Nan Li (2022): Managing public opinion in consensus-reaching processes for large-
scale group decision-making problems, Journal of the Operational Research Society, DOI:
10.1080/01605682.2021.1993760

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01605682.2021.1993760

Published online: 13 Jan 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tjor20
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/01605682.2021.1993760

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Managing public opinion in consensus-reaching processes for large-scale

group decision-making problems
Guo-Rui Yanga,b , Xueqing Wanga, Ru-Xi Dingc
, Jingjun (David) Xub and Meng-Nan Lia
a
College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, PR China; bDepartment of Information Systems, College of
Business, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PR China; cSchool of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of
Technology, Beijing, PR China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In a public-related decision-making event, some people whose interests are not consistent Received 26 May 2021
with the result of the event may post some false information on social media to guide Accepted 8 October 2021
others against the event. Without proper management, the public’s opposition may lead to
KEYWORDS
the failure of the events, even causing social unrest and economic losses. In order to reduce
Decision support systems;
the impact of false information on the evolution of people’s opinions, this paper develops opinion dynamics; large-
two opinion dynamics models to investigate the evolution process of opinions of decision scale group decision-
makers and other related people on social media. Then, in order to manage the public opin- making; consensus-
ion formed by all related people’s opinions and ensure a smooth implementation of the reaching process
result of these events in real life, a public opinion management-based consensus reaching
process is proposed. Meanwhile, to improve the efficiency of management measures, people
are divided into two categories based on their confidence levels. Eventually, an illustrative
example and simulations are provided to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the
proposed model for managing public opinion.

1. Introduction cause the failure of the decision-making event (e.g.,

With the development of information technology and
online democracy, more and more people tend to
express their opinions towards public-related deci-
sion-making events on social media. People who
make comments on these events are usually decision
makers (DMs) or stakeholders of these events.
Sometimes, people interested in these events will also
voice their opinions on social media. Unsatisfied with
the results of the events, people may begin to boycott
these events online, which makes public opinion1
towards these events a vital factor in the success of
these events. With the development of a public-
related decision-making event, although DMs have
reached an acceptable consensus2, a negative public
opinion towards the event may be formed on social
media, which are often caused by the false informa-
tion3 related to the event and may lead to the failure
of the decision-making event.
For example, since the last century, to protect the
environment and solve the energy crisis, govern-
ments began to build nuclear power plants.
However, the construction of these facilities will
have serious impacts on the local environment. That
is why these facilities are usually called NIMBY (not
in my backyard) facilities. In the siting process of
these facilities, the opposition of related public can
Anti-nuclear movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement)). In these decision-
making events, DMs have reached a consensus
about the location of these facilities. However,
unsatisfied with the result of the events, local
residents began to present objections forcefully
to attract more people’s attention. In the end, due
to the opposition of public, these projects had to
be terminated.
Generally, the public opinion has a significant
impact on the decision-making process. In the
above cases, due to the opposition of the public,
even an acceptable consensus among DMs has been
achieved, it is difficult for the decision-making event
to proceed with. There are many similar events in
real life. Without proper management, the public’s
opposition may turn into beating, smashing, looting,
and burning, which can cause social unrest and eco-
nomic losses. Therefore, it is necessary to detect the
discrepancy between public opinion formed by peo-
ple and consensus among DMs in time, and to
manage public opinion in decision-making process
to ensure that the consensus among DMs is sup-
ported by the related public.
Large-scale group decision-making (LGDM), a
powerful tool for handling complex decision-making
problems in which significant numbers of DMs are

CONTACT Ru-Xi Ding dingruxi@bit.edu.cn School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 10081, PR China

Yangtze Delta Region Academy of Beijing Institute of Technology, Jiaxing.
ß Operational Research Society 2022
2 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
involved (e.g., more than 20 people), has attracted
increasing attention (Du et al., 2020; Gou et al.,
2020; Li et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2019). In LGDM
events, possible alternatives are evaluated by DMs
using a variety of representations with the aim of
selecting the most acceptable alternative (Chao
et al., 2021a; Lu et al., 2021; Ren et al., 2020). In
general, LGDM models are designed to rank a
group of feasible alternatives to reach an acceptable
consensus among DMs (Li et al., 2020b; Xu et al.,
2020; Zhang et al., 2018). In addition, the analytic
hierarchy process is a widely used tool in the prob-
lem of multi-criteria group decision making. Lin
et al. (2020) proposed aggregation of the nearest
consistent matrices with the acceptable consensus in
analytic hierarchy process-group decision making.
Consensus-reaching processes (CRPs), an import-
ant part of LGDM models, have been widely used to
assist DMs by improving the level of consensus
(Song et al., 2021; Tian et al., 2019). Normally, a
typical CRP includes four main phases (Ding et al.,
2020): (1) the DM clustering phase, (2) the detection
of non-cooperative/key DMs/clusters phase, (3) the
preference modification and recommendation-feed-
back phase, and (4) the DM weight-updating phase.
Numerous CRPs have been proposed to deal with
LGDM problems in different situations. For
instance, Palomares et al. (2014) presented a CRP to
detect and the non-cooperative behaviours of DMs.
Dong et al. (2016) further proposed an operator
that can generate the DMs’ weights according to
their behaviours, and Xu et al. (2019) presented a
clustering method for DMs, based on which the
non-cooperative behaviours can be defined and
managed. Liu et al. (2019b) proposed a trust rela-
tionship-based CRP to detect and manage DMs’
conflict behaviours.
In the recommendation-feedback processes of
CRPs, DMs are often required to provide their eval-
uations in pairwise comparison matrices. In Zhang
et al. (2019), multiple self-confidence levels are con-
sidered in pairwise comparison matrices provided
by DMs. Recommendation modification plans,
which are obtained by combining DMs’ individual
and collective evaluations with a certain modifica-
tion rate (Wu & Xu, 2012), are often provided to
assist DMs in modifying their evaluations. Zhang
et al. (2020) reviewed the feedback mechanism with
minimum adjustment or cost. Chao et al. (2021b)
proposed a framework to improve the consensus
reaching and uses the minimum consensus cost to
reduce the total cost for LGDM events with more
than 1000 participants. Several previous studies have
assumed that DMs will accept the recommendation
modification plans in the CRPs. However, in real-
world decision-making events, when faced with a
recommendation modification plan, DMs have the
right to reject it (Liu et al., 2019a; Zhang et al.,
2018), which can have a very large influence on the
efficiency of the CRPs used for improving the con-
sensus among DMs.
Opinion dynamics, which investigates the fusion
process of individual opinions, has become a power-
ful tool for supporting public opinion management
(Dong et al., 2017; Liang et al., 2020). Numerous
opinion dynamics models have been proposed:
Degroot (1974) proposed an opinion dynamics
model in which people’s opinions in the next stage
are the weighted combinations of their opinions in
the previous stage; Friedkin and Johnsen (1990) pre-
sented a model to reveal opinion dynamics in com-
plex circumstances; Hegselmann and Krause (2002)
presented a bounded trust-based opinion dynamics
model, in which when people update their opinions,
only opinions within the bounded trust value will
be referred to; Durrett et al. (2012) developed a
model in which relationships between people are
updated with the evolution of opinion; Dong et al.
(2017) proposed that leadership has an important
effect on the evolution of opinion, and Li et al.
(2020a) further presented a model to investigate the
change in relationships between in the evolution of
opinion. Moreover, Zha et al. (2020) pointed out
that the application of opinion dynamics model in
group decision making and e-commerce is begin-
ning to be recognized, and it is still necessary to fur-
ther develop the theoretical basis for in-depth
interdisciplinary integration research.
Besides, it is worth mentioning that the public
opinion management proposed in this paper refers
to matching the evolution of public opinion with
the development of consensus among DMs, rather
than manipulating the public opinion. Traditional
management measures generally include identifying
false information, making timely clarifications about
the event, and so on.
According to the above literature review, the cur-
rent research gaps relating CRPs and public opinion
management for public-related LGDM events can be
summarized as follows:
 Many existing CRPs focus on the clustering
methods of DMs (e.g., Li et al., 2019), the detec-
tion of DMs’ non-cooperative behaviours (e.g.,
Xu et al., 2019; Gou et al., 2020), and the feed-
back mechanism with minimum cost (e.g., Zhang
et al., 2020). As one of the other key factors in
the success of decision-making events, public
opinion is not considered in CRPs, which may
lead to a discrepancy between the consensus
among DMs and wider public opinion.
Furthermore, without proper management, this

kind of discrepancy will translate into the failure
of LGDM events.
 Most traditional opinion dynamics models are
designed based on the assumption that people’s
opinions (o 2 ½1, 1) are in one dimension (e.g.,
Degroot, 1974; Dong et al., 2017; Li et al. 2020a).
However, in a public-related LGDM event, DMs
are generally required by multi-criteria decision-
making to provide their evaluation
(E 2 RNN , N  2) in multi-dimension on alter-
natives of the decision-making event (e.g., Zhang
et al., 2018; Chao et al., 2021a). In this situation,
as one of most important factors in the evolution
of DMs’ opinions, DMs’ evaluation cannot be
considered in existing opinion dynamics models.
 Furthermore, the effect of general management
measures for public opinion is limited. When
managing public opinion, existing research does
not distinguish people with their different attrib-
utes and takes targeted management measures
accordingly. These individual attributes often
have a significant impact on the effectiveness of
management measures.
Motivated by these challenges, this study devel-
oped a public opinion management-based consensus
reaching process (POM-CRP) for public-related
LGDM events. If the consensus or public opinion of
the event cannot reach the acceptable level, the deci-
sion-making event may fail. Thus, the aim of the
POM-CRP is to manage public opinion and
improve consensus among DMs simultaneously,
ensuring the smooth process of the event. The inno-
vations of the proposed model can be described
as follows:
 In the POM-CRP, public opinion is treated as a
vital indicator of the LGDM event. Before mak-
ing a final decision, both the consensus among
DMs and the public opinion need to reach
acceptable levels. The POM-CRP is proposed to
help DMs reach a consensus while simultan-
eously achieving public satisfaction with the
LGDM event, ensuring the smooth implementa-
tion of the result of the alternative selec-
tion process.
 In order to investigate the evolution process of
DMs’ opinions, a method is developed to reduce
the dimension of DMs’ evaluations. Through the
proposed method, DMs’ evaluation on alterna-
tives of the decision-making event will be trans-
lated into a one-dimensional value, which is an
important part of DMs’ one-dimen-
sional opinions.
 To achieve a more effective public opinion man-
agement process, people are divided into two
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 3
categories based on their confidence levels which
is one of the most important factors that can
affect the reserving ratio of their previous opin-
ions in the process of updating opinions. General
management measures are also divided into two
categories for them, which can significantly
improve the efficiency of the public opinion
management process.
The remainder of this paper is organized as fol-
lows. In Section 2, preliminaries regarding LGDM
and opinion dynamics are introduced. Then, two
opinion dynamics models for the public-related
LGDM event are presented in Section 3. The POM-
CRP to manage public opinion in LGDM events is
described in Section 4. Following this, an illustrative
example and several simulations are provided in
Section 5 to demonstrate the validity and efficiency
of the POM-CRP for managing public opinion.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 6.
2. Preliminaries
Before formally introducing the POM-CRP, it is
necessary to briefly review some preliminaries. A
description of LGDM problems is provided in
Section 2.1. Additionally, basic concepts of opinion
dynamics are introduced in Section 2.2.
2.1. Basic concepts of public-related
LGDM events
Some basic concepts of a public-related LGDM
event are set out as follows:
1. Let X ¼ fx1 , x2 , :::, xn , :::, xN g be the alternative
set and f1, 2, :::, n, :::, Ng represent the indexes
of the alternatives.
2. Let D ¼ fd1 , d2 , :::, dm , :::, dM g be the DM set
and f1, 2, :::, m, :::, Mg represent the indexes of
the DMs.
3. Let A ¼ fa1 , a2 , :::, ag , :::, aG g be the public set,
which consists of G people including DMs,
stakeholders and others who have expressed
opinions towards the event. Let
f1, 2, :::, g, :::, Gg represent the indexes of peo-
ple, meeting the condition: G  M: For con-
venience, in the rest paper, people in set A will
be called agents.
ij
4. Let Em ¼ ðem ÞNN be DM dm’s evaluation
ij
matrix, where em represents dm’s degree of pref-
erence for alternative xi over
xj ði, j 2 f1, 2, :::, n, :::, NgÞ:
5. Let E ¼ ðE1 , E2 , :::, Em , :::, EM Þ be the evaluation
matrix including all Em :
4 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
6. Let x ¼ ðx1 , x2 , :::, xm , :::, xM Þ be the decision
weights of the DMs, where xm represents the
importance weight of DM dm in the
LGDM event.
2.2. Basic concepts of opinion dynamics
In this paper, we use og 2 ½1, 1 to represent agent
ag’s individual opinion of an LGDM event: og ¼ 1
means that ag completely supports the LGDM event;
1 indicates total opposition; and 0 indicates neu-
trality. The POM-CRP allows agents to provide their
individual opinions, between total opposition and
total support. Besides, the false information refers to
agents’ opinions o<lðl 2 ð1, 0ÞÞ: The setting of l
is often related to the targeted public opinion. For
example, if the targeted public opinion is 0.25, l
is often set as l<0:25: Moreover, DMs’ individual
opinions can be calculated based on their evalua-
tions on alternatives. More details are shown in
Section 3.2.2.
With the development of the LGDM event,
every agent will continuously form new individual
opinions, and these will contain a part of his/her
previous individual opinion. It is worth mention-
ing that for different agents, the persistence of
their own previous individual opinions will be dif-
ferent. Agents with high confidence levels are
more likely to stick to their opinions. Conversely,
less confident agents are more likely to be affected
by others’ opinions. Therefore, we use clg 2 ½0, 1
to represent agent ag’s confidence level: clg ¼ 1
indicates that ag is full of confidence and com-
pletely unaffected by other agents, while 0 indi-
cates that ag is not at all confident and there will
be no reservation of his/her previous opinion
when forming a new individual opinion. However,
in the real world, for agents, communicating on
social media is different from face-to-face commu-
nication. Social media magnifies the impact of
agents’ opinions on others, which means that the
number of agents whose confidence levels belong
to ½0:5, 1 is quite small. Besides, there are few
agents whose confidence levels are close to 0 in
real life. Therefore, we assume that most agents’
confidence levels belong to ½0:1, 0:5:
Besides, we use the directed approach to repre-
sent the relationships between agents, and the
relationships are assumed to be bidirectional. Every
pair of agents al and ak can choose one of four
ways to represent their relationships: ðrlk , rkl Þ ¼
ð1, 0Þ, ðrlk , rkl Þ ¼ ð0, 1Þ, ðrlk , rkl Þ ¼ ð1, 1Þ, or ðrlk , rkl Þ
¼ ð0, 0Þ: If rlk ¼ 1, we refer to al as a follower of ak;
(1, 0) and (0, 1) indicate that the relationship
between al and ak is unidirectional; (1, 1) indicates
that al and ak are followers of each other; and (0, 0)
indicates al and ak do not know each other. On
these bases, we define several formal concepts of
opinion dynamics as:
1. Let cg ¼ ðog , clg Þ be agent ag’s state vector in
LGDM events, which consists of the individual
opinion og and the confidence level clg.
2. Let C ¼ ðc1 , c2 , :::, cg , :::, cG Þ be the state vector
of all agents in LGDM events.
3. Let R ¼ ðrlk ÞGG ðrlk 2 f0, 1gÞ be the relation-
ship matrix of all agents, meeting the condi-
tion: rll ¼ 0 ðl ¼ 1, 2, :::, GÞ:
3. Opinion dynamics models for
LGDM events
Social media provides agents with quick and con-
venient access to information, and agents may gen-
erate opinions relating to an LGDM event through
different social media platforms. As there is often a
discrepancy between the generated public opinion
and the consensus reached by DMs, public opinion
has become one of the key factors in the success of
public-related LGDM events. Thus, it is necessary to
fully understand the evolution of public opinion and
carry out appropriate management measures for
LGDM events.
In this section, the public opinion calculation
process is presented in Section 3.1. Opinion
dynamics models to describe the evolution of dif-
ferent agents’ opinions in an LGDM event are
introduced in Section 3.2. In Section 3.3, agents are
divided into different categories based on their
attributes, and targeted management measures for
these categories with different attributes
are proposed.
3.1. Public opinion calculation process
In this part, we present a public opinion calculation
operator to compute the public opinion produced
by all agents. Let z ¼ f1, 2, :::, Zmax g be a discrete
time index that is also the index of the consensus
round. Here, we utilize the simple aggregation of
agents’ individual opinions as the public opinion,
which is defined below.
Definition 3.1. (Public Opinion) For each consen-
sus round of POM-CRP, let
PG z
g¼1 og
PO ¼
z
(1)
G
be the public opinion towards the LGDM event in
the z-th consensus round, where PO 2 ½1, 1 :
PO > 0 indicates that most of the public hold a posi-
tive attitude towards the LGDM event; conversely, if

PO < 0, we can infer that the LGDM event is
resisted by most agents.
3.2. Opinion dynamics
Since public opinion is calculated by aggregating
agents’ individual opinions, public opinion will
evolve gradually with the evolution of agents’ indi-
vidual opinions. In this section, a typical opinion
dynamics model will be introduced first. Then, dif-
ferent opinion dynamics models for different agents
will be proposed. In the end, the evolution process
of public opinion is presented.
In existing researches, several opinion dynamics
models have been proposed (e.g., Degroot 1974;
Hegselmann & Krause, 2002; Dong et al., 2017; Li
et al. 2020a). In most previous models, agent ag’s
new individual opinion is calculated based on his/
her previous individual opinion and the opinions of
others within a certain distance from ag in the social
network. For example, in Dong et al. (2017), agent
ag’s opinion will be updated as a weighted aggrega-
tion of the opinions of all agents as follows:
X
G !
ozþ1
g ¼ bg ozg þ ð1bg Þ ngl ozl ,
l¼1, l6¼g
where bg represents the trust value that agent ag
gives to his/her own opinion, and ngl, which is nega-
tively related to graph distance between ag and al in
social network, represents the extent of trust that ag
gives to agent al.
3.2.1. Opinion dynamics model for agents who
are not DMs
The development of social media has gradually nar-
rowed the gaps between agents; agents can easily
obtain information posted by others they are follow-
ing. Social media also provide agents with access to
opinions towards the same event from other agents
he/she is not following. Moreover, since DMs have
participated in the evaluation process of the deci-
sion-making event, agents are more likely to be
affected by them. Because of these, an opinion
dynamics model for LGDM events is proposed here.
During the development of LGDM events, agents
will constantly communicate with each other
through social media. Therefore, when agent ag
forms a new individual opinion ozþ1 g in the
ðz þ 1Þ-th consensus round, he/she is mainly
affected by two things: his/her previous individual
opinion towards the LGDM event and opinions pro-
vided by other agents. The latter can be further div-
ided into three parts according to the sources of the
comments: (1) opinions from other agents he/she is
not following; (2) opinions provided by DMs he/she
is following; and (3) opinions voiced by other agents
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 5
he/she is following. It worths mentioning that when
the value of G is large enough, opinions from other
agents he/she is not following can be replaced by
the public opinion, since the public opinion is
obtained by aggregating all agents’ opinions.
In communication between agents, since agents
are more easily influenced by others they trust, trust
relationships are also important. Let T ¼ ðtlk ÞGG be
the trust matrix among agents, where tlk represents
the trust of agent al toward agent ak. A large value
of tlk indicates that agent al will be more easily
affected by agent ak. If rlk ¼ 0, which means that al
is not following ak, the trust value assigned to ak by
al will equal to 0.
Following the above idea, the individual opinion
of agent ag who does not belong to the DM set in
the ðz þ 1Þ-th consensus round, ozþ1g , can be calcu-
lated by:
ozþ1
g ¼ clg ozg þ ð1clg Þ w1 POz
X
G
tgl
þ w2 PG rgl ozl
l¼1, al 2D l¼1, al 2D tgl
X
G
tgk
þ w3 PG rgk ozk , (2)
k¼1, ak 62D k¼1, ak 62D tgk
where clg is the confidence level of agent ag; and
w1 , w2 , w3 2 ½0, 1 (w1 þ w2 þ w3 ¼ 1) represent
the weight of public opinion, the weight of opinions
of DMs ag is following, and the weight of opinions
of other agents who are not in the DM set and ag is
following, respectively.
3.2.2. Opinion dynamics model for DMs
In CRPs, DMs will be required to provide their evalu-
ation on the alternatives of the LGDM event. In every
consensus round of CRPs, every DM will be provided
with a recommendation modification plan to help all
DMs reach an acceptable consensus. Then, faced with
the modification plan, a DM can choose to accept or
reject it. When a DM chooses to reject it, he/she is more
likely to be unsatisfied with the decision-making event.
Conversely, when a DM decides to accept the modifica-
tion plan, his/her support degree towards the LGDM
event is often related to the deviation between his/her
evaluation and the collective evaluation of all DMs. Since
the collective evaluation is used to make the final decision
of the event, the bigger the deviation between his/her
evaluation and the collective evaluation is, the lower his/
her support degree towards the event will be. Following
the above idea, a DM’s evaluation, which is in multi-
dimension, can be transformed into the support degree,
which is a one-dimensional value. Before giving the def-
inition of the support degree, the collective evaluation
will be defined first.
6 G.-R. YANG ET AL.

Figure 1. Evolution of public opinion.

Definition 3.2. (Collective Evaluation) Let Ec ¼ event. It is also worth mentioning that at the begin-
ij g g
ðec ÞNN be the collective evaluation matrix, where ning of an LGDM event, DM dm ’s (Because DM dm
ij ij ij also belongs to agent set, g refers to the index of
eijc ¼ x1 e1 þ x2 e2 þ    þ xm eijm þ    þ xM eM ,
agents and m indicates the index of DMs.) initial
(3) opinions towards the event can be calculated based
g
xm represent the decision weight of DM dm, and on dm ’s initial evaluation through Eq. (4), which
ij ij
ec , em represent the collective preference degree and means that o0g ¼ /0m : With the development of the
DM dm’s preference degree for alternative xi over xj, LGDM event, other agents’ opinions will be consid-
respectively. ered by DMs when updating their opinions.
Definition 3.3. (Support Degree) For DM dm, we In a public-related LGDM event, DMs, usually
define the support degree /zm towards the LGDM composed of the government and relevant experts,
event in the z-th consensus round as: are often required to listen to stakeholders and others.
g
Based on the above analyses, for DM dm , his/her
8 z
< 2devmc
1 , if DM dm accepted the recommendation modification plan,
/zm ¼ maxl ðdevlcz Þ (4)
:
1, if DM dm rejected the recommendation modification plan:

In the above definition, devzmc reflects the devi- individual opinion in the ðz þ 1Þ-th consensus
ation between the collective evaluation Ezc ¼ ðec ÞNN
ij
round is mainly affected by his/her support degree
and dm’s evaluation Ezm ¼ ðem ÞNN in the z-th con-
ij
in the ðz þ 1Þ-th consensus round calculated by
sensus round. This can be calculated using: Eq. (4), individual opinions of agents following
XN 1 XN him/her, and his/her previous individual opinion.
2
devmc ¼ ðdðeijm , eijc ÞÞ, (5) Following the above idea, the individual opinion
NðN  1Þ i¼1 j¼iþ1 g
of DM dm in the ðz þ 1Þ-th consensus round, ozþ1 g ,
can be computed using:
where !
XG
1
dðeijm , eijc Þ ¼ jpijm pijc j: (6)
g ¼clg og þð1clg Þ w4
ozþ1 rgl ozl þw5 /zþ1
z
PG m ,
l¼1 l¼1 r gl
It is clear that / 2 ½1, 1: For DM dm, a large value
of /zm indicates a high degree of support from DMs (7)
g
in the z-th consensus round. Conversely, if /zm <0, where clg is the confidence level of DM dm ;
/4 ,/5 2
we can infer that dm is not satisfied with the LGDM ½0,1 (/4 þ/5 ¼1) represent the weight of opinions

g g
of agents following dm and the weight of dm ’s sup-
port degree in the ðzþ1Þ-th consensus round,
respectively. It is also worth mentioning that differ-
ent from the opinion dynamics model for agents
who are not DMs, because DMs are often required
to treat their followers equally, agents whose opin-
ions are referred by DMs will be assigned equal
importance weights.
3.2.3. Evolution of public opinion
Applying Eqs. (2) and (7), opinions of all agents can
be updated. Since public opinion is an aggregation
of agents’ opinions, public opinion can also be cal-
culated by using Eq. (1). To make the evolution
process easier to follow, an example of public opin-
ion evolution is provided in Figure 1. Agent a2, who
is a follower of agent a1 and DM d14 , will form his
individual opinion based on his previous individual
opinion, public opinion, DM d14 ’s individual opin-
ion, and agent a1’s individual opinion. Then, DM
d14 , who is following by agents a1, a2, and a3, can
update her individual opinion based on her previous
individual opinion, support degree towards the
event in the z-th consensus round, and the individ-
ual opinions of agents a1, a2, and a3. Commonly, by
implementing different opinion dynamics models,
we can obtain the individual opinions of all DMs
and agents, and these can then be used to calculate
the public opinion.
3.3. Management of public opinion
In this section, two common categories of agents
are introduced. Targeted management measures are
then proposed to govern the public opinion formed
by these different categories.
As one of the most important attributes of
agents, confidence level often has a decisive effect
on the reserved ratio of agents’ previous opinions
when they update their opinions, which has been
discussed in Section 2.2. Besides, the confidence
level of agents can also affect the extent of being
influenced by the opinions of different agents, which
means that agent’s confidence level has an influence
on the weights of opinions (e.g., w1, w2, w3, w4 and
w5) in opinion dynamics models.
For an agent who is not DM, if he/she is highly
confident about an LGDM event, which means that
the trust value he/she gives to his/her previous opin-
ion is relatively large, he/she is more likely to be the
stakeholder whose self-interest is closely related to
the result of the event. Under the circumstances, no
matter the public opinion and the opinion of a DM
who often owns numbers of followers are, he/she
will be less affected by them because his/her interest
is bound up with the result of the event. In other
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 7
words, the weight of public opinion w1 and the
weight of DMs’ opinions w2 will decrease with the
increment of the agent’s confidence level cl.
Conversely, if an agent is not the stakeholder of the
event, he/she may be easy to be affected by the
opinions of others. In this situation, he/she is more
likely to be influenced by the DMs he/she is follow-
ing, especially those who have large numbers of fol-
lowers. Meanwhile, public opinion will also play an
important role in the evolution of his/her opinion.
For a DM, if he/she has a high confidence level,
which means that he/she places more trust in his/
her own opinion, he/she may refer less to the opin-
ions of the agents following him/her and more to
his/her support degree / for the LGDM event when
forming his/her new opinion. Contrarily, if he/she is
less confident, more weight will be assigned to the
opinions of agents following him/her in the evolu-
tion of his/her opinion. Therefore, the weight of
opinions of the agents following him/her w4 will
decrease with the increasing confidence level.
In existing researches, confidence levels are often
regarded as one of the most vital parameters in
opinion dynamics models (e.g., Hegselmann &
Krause, 2002; Dong et al., 2017; Li et al., 2021). In
this paper, the confidence level also plays an import-
ant role in the proposed opinion dynamics models.
In order to manage the public opinion, different
management measures have been proposed.
Through simulations, we found that the efficiency
of management measures is greatly affected by the
confidence level of agents. More details are given in
Sections 5.2.2 and 5.2.3. To reach a higher effi-
ciency, agents are divided into two common catego-
ries: agents with higher confidence levels and agents
with lower confidence levels.
For the former pattern, they are less affected by
public opinion and opinions of DMs. However, for
the latter pattern, they are more easily affected by
the public opinion and opinions of DMs who have
large numbers of followers. The average confidence
PG
clg
level of all agents can be calculated as CL ¼ g¼1 G :
We then define a confidence-level threshold CL,
and if CL>CL, we consider that the group belongs
to the first pattern; otherwise, we consider that it
belongs to the second pattern. Normally, agents’
confidence levels can be obtained in two ways. The
first is a self-reported confidence level (Liu et al.,
2019c), which is given by the agent and therefore
lacks objectivity. The second method requires agents
to provide their opinions in intuitionistic fuzzy rep-
resentation. In this way, their degrees of uncertainty
can be calculated based on their opinions, which is
negatively correlated with confidence levels of agents
(Urena et al., 2015).
8 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
The following management measures are intro-
duced for the two categories of agents:
 Management Measure I: For agents with high
confidence levels, the best management measure
is identifying false information, making a timely
clarification about the LGDM event, and expos-
ing the agents who released this information.
Because the interests of highly confident agents
are often closely related to the result of the deci-
sion-making event, when they are faced with
false information (The effect of false information
on the evolution of public opinion will be
detailed discuss in Section 5.2.2), they will be
more cautious about these opinions. Therefore, if
these agents are given help to recognize the
actual situation, they will not only change their
views on the LGDM event but will also reduce
their reference to the false information, which
can effectively improve the value of public opin-
ion PO. In the following simulations, we suppose
that applying management measure I, agents
who provide false information will have their
trust values reduced by other agents. This means
that if agent ag’s individual opinion in the z-th
consensus round oz1 g <lðz  1Þ, the trust values
z
assigned to him/her t , g will be reduced to
ð1q1 Þt, g : The deducted part of trust values
z1
q1 t
z1
, g will then be equally divided among the
agents whose individual opinions oz1  l:
 Management Measure II: For agents who are less
confident and more easily affected by the false infor-
mation, the best management measure is paying
more attention to DMs’ opinions and trying to
improve DMs’ support degree of the LGDM event.
Since agents with low confidence are easier to be
affected by others’ opinions, especially DMs’ opinions,
when most DMs support the event, the values of
these agents’ opinions will be improved accordingly,
increasing the value of PO with high efficiency. In
this paper, we assume that through persuasion, DMs
who accept the recommendation modification plan is
willing to raise their support degree in the z-th con-
sensus round by q2, which means after applying man-
agement measure II, /zm ¼ /zm þ q2 (if the adjusted
/zm >1, then /zm ¼ 1).
The evolution and management of public opinion
is a part of the proposed model. In the next section,
the complete POM-CRP for public-related LGDM
events will be presented.
4. Public opinion management-based
consensus-reaching framework
In this section, we propose a framework for public-
related LGDM events to guide public opinion on
the basis of consensus to guarantee the smooth
implementation of the result of the LGDM event.
The framework consists of two parts: (1) the public
opinion management-based consensus-reaching pro-
cess, which is presented in Section 4.1, and (2) the
selection process, which is introduced in Section 4.2.
4.1. Public opinion management-based
consensus-reaching process
In this section, the POM-CRP is described. In con-
trast to previous CRPs, the POM-CRP no longer
regards improving the level of consensus among
DMs as the only purpose of the CRP but takes both
public opinion and the degree of group consensus
into consideration. The POM-CRP consists of four
parts: (1) the DM weight-calculation process, (2) the
consensus and public opinion measurement process,
(3) the recommendation-feedback process, and (4)
the evolution and management of public opinion.
These four parts will be elaborated in the next four
subsections. The flowchart of POM-CRP is shown
in Figure 2.
4.1.1. DM weight-calculation process
In this process, a DM weight-calculation operator is
introduced based on the relationship and trust
g
matrix among agents. Normally, if DM dm has a
PG
large value of rg ¼ l¼1 rlg , which means he/she
has a large number of followers, he/she may be
more respected by the rest of agents. Meanwhile, if
g P
dm has large value of tg ¼ Gl¼1 tlg , which means
that he/she is more trusted by others, he/she will
have a great influence on other agents. Following
g
this, for DM dm , his/her weight in the LGDM event
can be computed by:
PG
l¼1 tlg rlg
xm ¼ PG PG : (8)
k¼1, ak 2D l¼1 tlk rlk
P
It is clear that Mm¼1 xm ¼ 1: If a DM has a large
number of followers and is trusted by others, he/she
will have a large weight in the LGDM event.
Conversely, a small weight often means that a DM
is less popular than others with high weights.
4.1.2. Consensus and public opinion measure-
ment process
In this section, a consensus calculation method is
presented to obtain the group consensus degree
(GCD) among DMs, which is one of the most
important indicators to measure the consensus
among DMs. Then, this is considered alongside the
public opinion computed by the method proposed
in Section 3.1: if public opinion and the GCD both
reach preset thresholds, a selection process will be
conducted to choose the optimal alternative.
 JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 9

Figure 2. Public opinion management-based consensus-reaching process.

PM1 PM
k¼lþ1 xlk  ð1devlk Þ
Otherwise, the recommendation-feedback process
l¼1
and/or the management of public opinion will GCD ¼ PM1 PM , (9)
be conducted. l¼1 k¼lþ1 xlk
Normally, the consensus calculation method is
designed to compute the GCD among DMs by tak- where xzlk 2 ½0, 1 can be obtained by xzlk ¼
ing DMs’ evaluations and weights into account. minðxzl , xzk Þ, and devlk reflects the deviation
Several calculation methods have been proposed between dl’s and dk’s evaluations Ezl and Ezk in the z-
(e.g., Wu & Xu, 2012; Palomares et al., 2014). Here, th consensus round.
the method proposed by Palomares et al. (2014) will It is clear that GCD 2 ½0, 1: A large value of
be adopted, which is as follows. GCD indicates a high level of consensus among
Definition 4.1. (Group Consensus Degree) For an DMs; conversely, if there is a large deviation among
LGDM event, the GCD is defined as: DMs’ evaluations, a small value of GCD will be
10 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
Figure 3. Consensus and public opinion measurement process.
obtained. Public opinion PO can be obtained by
applying Eq. (1).
In the CRP, a consensus threshold 1 2 ½0, 1 and
a public opinion threshold 2 2 ½0, 1 are often pre-
determined. If GCD  1 and PO  2 , we consider
that the consensus among DMs and public opinion
have reached an acceptable level. Then, the selection
process will be conducted. Otherwise, the recom-
mendation-feedback process will be conducted to
help DMs improve their consensus, and targeted
management measures for public opinion formed by
different agents will be adopted to guide the evolu-
tion of public opinion. The consensus and public
opinion measurement process is shown in Figure 3.
4.1.3. Recommendation-feedback process
If the consensus among DMs does not reach the
required level (GCD<1 ), the recommendation-feed-
back process will be employed to provide a recom-
mendation modification plan for each DM to guide
him/her to modify his/her evaluation. Several rec-
ommendation-feedback methods have been pro-
posed. Dong et al. (2015) proposed a minimum-
cost-based recommendation-feedback method. Wu
and Xu (2012) and Zhang et al. (2018) introduced a
method to compute a recommendation modification
plan based on the collective evaluation, and this is
the method that will be adopted in this paper. The
main idea of this method is utilizing the collective
evaluation Ec , which is presented in Definition 3.2,
to generate the recommendation modification plan.
For example, in Zhang et al. (2018), the recommen-
dation modification plan for DM dm is set as
 m ¼ðe ijm Þ meeting the condition e m 2
ij
E NN ,
ij ij ij ij
½minðem , ec Þ, maxðem , ec Þ:
By considering the modification rate h 2 ½0, 1, at
which the collective evaluation is combined with
DM dm’s evaluation, the recommendation modifica-
tion plan for dm can be redefined, as shown in
Definition 4.2.
Definition 4.2. (Recommendation Modification
Plan) For DM dm, the recommendation modifica-
 m ¼ðe ijm Þ
tion plan E NN is defined as:
e ijm ¼ heijc þ ð1hÞeijm : (10)
Faced with the recommendation modification
plan, DMs normally have two options: accept or
reject. Previous studies have noted that the effi-
ciency of a CRP can be affected by DM rejection
(Liu et al., 2019a). However, these studies did not
consider what kind of factors can affect DM
acceptance or rejection. Normally, a large value of
h, which indicates that only a small part of the rec-
ommendation modification plan is carried over
from the DMs’ previous evaluations, often leads to
more rejection from DMs. If a small modification
rate is adopted in a CRP, meaning that the recom-
mendation modification plans are based more on
the DMs’ previous evaluations, DMs are more
likely to accept the recommendation plans.
Following this idea, an acceptance function for
DMs is designed.
Definition 4.3. (Acceptance Function) Let PA be
the probability of DMs accepting the recommenda-
tion modification plan, which can be calculated by:
PA ¼ 1h: (11)
Clearly, PA 2 ½0, 1: In particular, when h ¼ 0,
PA ¼ 1, which indicates that the DMs will be willing
to modify their evaluations according to the recom-
mendation modification plans because their previous
evaluations are retained from the last consensus
round. Conversely, PA ¼ 0 indicates that the DMs
will reject the recommendation modification plans
as they do not take their previous evaluations into
consideration. In other words, when h 2 f0, 1g, the
consensus among DMs will no be improved through
the recommendation-feedback process. It is worth
mentioning that when the acceptance function is
applied in a CRP, a large value of h no longer indi-
cates a high efficiency in improving the level of con-
sensus among DMs. There may exist an optimal
modification rate h
for CRPs, at which CRP can
reach the highest efficiency for LGDM events. More
details about the optimal modification rate h
will
be introduced in Section 5.2.1.

4.1.4. Evolution and management of pub-
lic opinion
This process consists of two parts: the evolution of
public opinion and the management of pub-
lic opinion.
In the evolution of public opinion, when the rec-
ommendation-feedback process is completed in the
z-th consensus round (z  1), DMs may express
their opinions towards the LGDM event on social
media, and other agents will also present their opin-
ions. Applying Eqs. (2) and (7), all opinions of
agents in this consensus round oz can be calculated.
Then, utilizing Eq. (1), the public opinion POz can
be obtained. The detailed evolution process of pub-
lic opinion has been introduced in Section 3.2.3.
In the above process, if POz1  2 , the manage-
ment of public opinion will not be conducted.
Conversely, if POz1 <2 , targeted management
measures will be adopted in the evolution of public
opinion. If the average confidence level of all agents
CL  CL, management measure I will be adopted;
otherwise, management measure II will be adopted.
By applying different management measures, the
trust matrix among agents Tz or DMs’ support
degrees / will be updated. More details about the
management of public opinion are described in
Section 3.3.
4.2. Selection process
In this section, we set Zmax as the maximum con-
sensus round. Once the preset thresholds for GCD
and public opinion are all reached within the max-
imum consensus round Zmax , the selection process
will be conducted to select the optimal alternative.
Applying Eq. (3), the final collective evaluation can
be obtained. Then, the evaluation value (EV) of
alternative xi can be computed by:
PN ij
j¼1 ec
EVi ¼ : (12)
N
Finally, by comparing the values of EV, the opti-
mal alternative x
can be selected.
A detailed description of the proposed frame-
work, including POM-CRP and the selection pro-
cess, is presented in Appendix A.
5. Illustrative example and experiments
In this section, an illustrative example is provided in
Section 5.1 to verify the practicality of the proposed
model. In Section 5.2, several simulations are
conducted to test the efficiency of the model on
managing public opinion in the consensus reach-
ing process.
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 11
5.1. Illustrative example
In this section, we develop an illustrative example to
show the applicability and validity of the POM-CRP
for managing public opinion in LGDM events. The
abbreviations and notations used are listed in
Appendix B.
In this example, to facilitate the calculations, we
set G ¼ 1000 and M ¼ 20, and we fix the number of
alternatives N ¼ 5 and the maximum consensus
round Zmax ¼ 10: Then, we set h ¼ 0:35, which was
found to be the optimal modification rate (h
) in
simulation I. In existing researches (i.e., Palomares
et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2018), the parameters of
management measures are often set between 0 and
0.5. In simulations II and III, these parameters are
further discussed, in which q1 2 f0, 0:1,
0:2, 0:3, 0:4, 0:5g and q2 2 f0, 0:05, 0:1, 0:15, 0:2,
0:25, 0:3g: In this part, to ensure the efficiency of
management measures, we let q1 ¼ 0:4 and q2 ¼
0:25: As the confidence level of agent often belong
to ½0:1, 0:5, we let CL ¼ 0:3: Besides, the relation-
ship matrix of agents R, the trust matrix of agents
T, the condition vector of agents C, the initial evalu-
ations of DMs E0 , and the initial opinions of agents
except DMs o0 are generated randomly. Due to the
limited space, they will not be presented in the
main body of this paper. Combined with the ana-
lysis in Section 3.3, we let w1 ¼ w2 ¼
ð0:951:5CLÞ=2, w3 ¼ 1w1 w2 , w4 ¼ 0:951:5CL
and w5 ¼ 1w4 : Finally, we set 1 ¼ 0:9, 2 ¼ 0:05
and l ¼ 0, and use the proposed POM-CPR to assist
agents in achieving a consensus while simultan-
eously managing public opinion.
5.1.1. Initial stage of POM-CRP
In the initial stage of POM-CRP, there are three
main tasks to complete: (1) calculating the initial
weights of those DMs x0 , and (2) producing the
group consensus degree GCD0 and public opin-
ion PO0.
5.1.1.1. DM weight-calculation process. Randomly
selecting agent as DM, the DM set can be obtained
D ¼ fd125 , d235 , d385 , d4240 , d5262 , d6369 , d7452 , d8712 , d9724 , d10
774
,
d11 , d12 , d13 , d14 , d15 , d16 , d17 , d18 , d19 , d20 g:
831 840 863 928 937 939 957 968 993 995
By using Eq. (8), the weights of DMs x0 in the ini-
tial stage can be computed x0 ¼ ð0:0585, 0.0517,
0.0543, 0.0532, 0.0551, 0.0542, 0.0466, 0.0490,
0.0514, 0.0472, 0.0454, 0.0430, 0.0495, 0.0496,
0.0510, 0.0433, 0.0457, 0.0490, 0.0508, 0:0514Þ:
5.1.1.2. consensus and public opinion measure-
ment process. In this part, GCD and PO are com-
puted. By applying Eqs. (5) and (9) on E0, the initial
group consensus degree is calculated as GCD0 ¼
0:6847: Using Eq. (4), the DMs’ initial individual
12 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
opinions can then be computed. Then, utilizing Eq.
(1), the initial public opinion can be calculated as
PO0 ¼ 0:0127: Now, because GCD0 ¼ 0:6847<1
and PO0 ¼ 0:0127<2 , the POM-CRP will be exe-
cuted to improve the consensus among DMs and
manage public opinion.
5.1.2. First consensus round
For the POM-CRP, a consensus round comprises
four parts: (1) recommendation-feedback process,
(2) evolution and management of public opinion,
(3) DM weight-calculation process, and (4) consen-
sus and public opinion measurement process. It is
worth mentioning that, in the evolution and man-
agement of public opinion, different management
measures are used for different categories of agents.
Here, we consider two situations (Case A: the aver-
age confidence level of agents CL ¼ 0.5 and Case B:
the average confidence level of agents CL ¼ 0.1) to
verify the availability of targeted management meas-
ures for different categories of agents. Moreover, for
Case A, the efficiency of management measure II is
relatively low. Therefore, only Management Measure
I will be adopted. Conversely, only Management
Measure II will be adopted for Case B. The relation-
ship between agents’ confidence levels and the effi-
ciency of different management measures will be
investigated in Sections 5.2.2 and 5.2.3.
5.1.2.1. Recommendation-feedback process. Using
Eq. (10), the recommendation modification plan E  1m
is provided to dm. Then, each DM will be assigned a
random number. If the random number is less than
PA ¼ 1h, we assume that dm will accept E  1m ;
otherwise, we suppose that dm will reject E 1m ; mean-
while, dm can express his/her evaluation according
^ 1 : By combining E
to his/her will in E  1 with E ^ 1 , E1
m
can be obtained.
5.1.2.2 Evolution and management of public opin-
ion. For Case A, CL>CL: As agents are highly con-
fident, Management Measure I will be adopted. By
analyzing agents’ individual opinions, the agents
who posted false information are exposed. The trust
,g ¼
1
values toward them are reduced to t
ð1q1 Þt, g , and the deducted part of the trust val-
0
ues q1 t
0
, g is equally divided among the agents
whose individual opinions o0  0: Applying Eqs. (2)
and (7), opinions of agents except DMs and opin-
ions of DMs in the first consensus round are com-
puted, respectively.
For Case B, CL CL: As agents have low confi-
dence levels, Management Measure II will be
adopted. Through persuasion, DMs who accept the
recommendation modification plans are willing to
raise their support degree to /1m ¼ /1m þ q2 (if the
adjusted /zm >1, then /1m ¼ 1) to ensure that the
LGDM event can go smoothly. Then, by using Eqs.
(2) and (7), opinions of agents except DMs and
opinions of DMs in the first consensus round are
calculated, respectively.
5.1.2.3. DM weight-calculation process. For Case
A, applying Eq. (8), the weights of DMs x1 in the
first consensus round can be calculated x1 ¼
ð0:0584, 0.0516, 0.0539, 0.0537, 0.0549, 0.0547,
0.0465, 0.0492, 0.0514, 0.0467, 0.0458, 0.0435,
0.0494, 0.0494, 0.0513, 0.0434, 0.0452, 0.0489,
0.0506, 0:0515Þ:
For Case B, it is worth mentioning that because
only Management Measure II is adopted, which
means that the trust relationship will not be
adjusted with the development of the POM-CRP,
the DMs’ weights in Case B will not change. In
other words, x1 ¼ x0 :
5.1.2.4. Consensus and public opinion measure-
ment process. By applying Eqs. (1) and (9), GCD
and PO in this consensus round can be obtained as
Case A: GCD1 ¼ 0:7839, PO1 ¼ 0:0306; Case B:
GCD1 ¼ 0:7820, PO1 ¼ 0:1274: It is clear that in
both cases, GCD1 <1 and PO1 <2 : Therefore, the
second consensus round is activated to help DMs
reach a consensus and to manage the pub-
lic opinion.
Due to the limitations of space and each consen-
sus round involving the same processes, we now
skip several consensus rounds and go straight to the
last consensus round. The DMs’ weights for Case A
in different consensus rounds are shown in Figure
4. GCD and PO in each consensus round are visual-
ized in Figure 5.
5.1.3. Last consensus round
As with the first consensus round, two categories of
agents are considered. In Case A and Case B, four
and six consensus rounds are required, respectively,
to reach the two thresholds.
5.1.3.1 Recommendation-feedback process.
Applying Eq. (10), recommendation modification
plans can be obtained. When faced with a recom-
mendation modification plan E,  a DM can choose
to accept or reject it. Their evaluations can then be
collected by E  and E:
^ For Case A, by combining E 4
with E^ , E can be obtained. For Case B, combining
4 4
E ^ 6 produces E6 :
 6 with E
5.1.3.2. Evolution and management of public
opinion. For Case A, Management Measure I will
be adopted. By analyzing agents’ individual opin-
ions, the agents who posted false information are

Figure 4. DMs’ weights x for Case A.
exposed. The trust values toward them are reduced
, g ¼ ð1q1 Þt, g , and the deducted part q1 t, g
4 3
to t
is equally divided among the agents whose individ-
ual opinions o3  0: Applying Eqs. (2) and (7),
agents’ opinions in the fourth consensus round
are obtained.
For Case B, Management Measure II will be
adopted. Through persuasion, DMs who accept the
recommendation modification plans are willing to
raise their support degree to /6m ¼ /6m þ q2 (if the
adjusted /6m >1, then /6m ¼ 1) to ensure that the
LGDM event can go smoothly. Then, by using Eqs.
(2) and (7), agents’ opinions in the sixth consensus
round are computed.
5.1.3.3. DM weight-calculation process. For Case
A, utilizing Eq. (8), the DMs’ weights are updated
to x4 ¼ ð0:0579, 0.0505, 0.0507, 0.0574, 0.0539,
0.0581, 0.0459, 0.0501, 0.0507, 0.0427, 0.0486,
0.0474, 0.0488, 0.0486, 0.0535, 0.0438, 0.0419,
0.0477, 0.0495, 0:0522Þ:
For Case B, x6 ¼ x5 :
5.1.3.4. Consensus and public opinion measure-
ment process. By applying Eqs. (1) and (9), GCD
and PO in this consensus iteration can be obtained
as Case A: GCD4 ¼ 0:9183, PO4 ¼ 0:0787; Case B:
GCD6 ¼ 0:9273, PO6 ¼ 0:0528: It is clear that
GCD>1 and PO>2 : This indicates that the con-
sensus among DMs and public opinion have all
reached the preset thresholds.
5.1.4. Selection process and summary of the illus-
trative example
By applying Eq. (12), the evaluation values of the
alternatives are computed, and the optimal alterna-
tive x2 is selected.
For Case A and Case B, we ran the illustrative
example 1000 times under the same conditions. As
shown in Figure 6a, in Case A, the proposed POM-
CRP takes an average of 5.03 consensus rounds with
a standard deviation of 0.77 to make GCD and PO
reach the preset thresholds. As shown in Figure 6b,
for Case B, there are 28 occasions when the number
of consensus rounds reaches 11. The maximum
number of consensus rounds Zmax ¼ 10, which
means that in those cases, the POM-CRP failed. In
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 13
3
Figure 5. Public opinion and group consensus degree in
Cases A and B.
other words, there is a 97.2% chance of taking an
average of 7.48 consensus rounds with a standard
deviation of 2.55 to make the LGDM event step into
the selection process.
By comparing the results shown in Figure 6, we
can infer that if agents have low confidence levels,
the POM-CRP will take more consensus rounds to
reach the two thresholds. Agents with low confi-
dence levels are easily affected by others, and this is
why the LGDM event may fail in Case B. Therefore,
it is of great importance to guide public opinion in
time, especially for situations such as Case B where
agents extremely lack confidence. To further verify
the effectiveness of the POM-CRP, a traditional
CRP without management of public opinion was
carried out as a benchmark, and details of this are
described in Section 5.2.2.
5.2. Simulations
In this section, several simulations are proposed.
First, in simulation I, we obtain the optimal modifi-
cation rate h
and further discuss whether there
exists a relationship between the number of alterna-
tives N and the optimal modification rate h
: In
simulations II and III, we investigate the connection
between false information and the evolution of pub-
lic opinion and analyse the effect of confidence lev-
els on the effectiveness of public opinion
management measures. Finally, with a traditional
CRP as the benchmark, the effectiveness of the
POM-CRP for managing public opinion is examined
in simulation IV.
14 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
Figure 6. Number of consensus rounds in Cases A and B. (a) Case A, (b) Case B.
5.2.1. Simulation I
Simulation I was conducted to determine the opti-
mal modification rate h
and investigate the rela-
tionship between the number of alternatives N and
the optimal modification rate h
: The main idea of
simulation method I is as follows.
In an LGDM event, the number of DMs who
refuse to modify their evaluations is related to the
modification rate h. In a consensus round, if a DM
rejects the recommendation modification plan, he/
she is free to modify his/her evaluation with the
modification rate h. In particular, if h ¼ 0, the rec-
ommendation modification plans are the same as
the DMs’ previous evaluations. Conversely, if h ¼ 1,
none of the DMs will be willing to modify their
evaluations. In these two cases, GCD will not be
improved. Therefore, there may exist an optimal
modification rate h
at which the group consensus
degree can be improved with the highest efficiency.
Simulation method I is described in Algorithm II.
In simulation method I, we fix Zmax ¼ 1,
G ¼ 2000, M ¼ 50, and set different input parameters
N ¼ f4, 5, :::, 19, 20g and h ¼ f0:01, 0:02, :::, 0:99, 1g:
Other relevant parameters are the same as the illus-
trative example in Section 5. We then run this
method 1000 times to produce an average value of
the increment of group consensus degree
(IGCD ¼ GCD1 GCD0 ). The results of this process
are shown in Figure 7.
By examining Figure 7a, we can see that IGCD
first increases and then decreases with increasing h.
By collecting data from three straight lines parallel
to the x axis and the y axis in Figure 7a, Figures 7b
and 7c can be produced, respectively. Through ana-
lyzing the results shown in Figure 7b, the optimal
modification rate h
, at which the group consensus
level can be improved with the highest efficiency,
can be obtained. Clearly, IGCD reaches its max-
imum when h ¼ 0:35: Additionally, as shown in
Figure 7c, the value of IGCD is not significantly
influenced by N for a given value of h.
5.2.2. Simulation II
Simulation II was devised to investigate the effect of
false information on the evolution of public opinion
and test the efficiency of Management Measure I for
managing public opinion. The basic idea of simula-
tion method II is as follows.
In an LGDM event, if the interests of agents are
inconsistent with the collective evaluation, they may
post some false information to obstruct the deci-
sion-making process. By exposing this kind of
behaviour, the trust values toward them will be
reduced by others. By removing Steps 11, 14, 15,
and 16 from Algorithm I and replacing the input,
Step 6, Step 12, and the output presented in
Algorithm III, simulation method II can
be obtained.
In simulation method II, the parameters are fixed
as Zmax ¼ 15, N ¼ 5, h ¼ 0:35, 2 ¼ 1: We set differ-
ent input parameters q1 ¼ f0, 0:1, :::, 0:5g and CL ¼
f0:1, 0:2, :::, 0:5g: Other relevant parameters are the
same as Simulation I. Then, we run the method
1000 times to obtain the average values of PO. The
results of this process are visualized in Figures 8–11.
As shown in Figure 8, if every agent’s initial
opinion is randomly generated and no one posts
false information, the values of PO will fluctuate
around 0. However, when there exists some false
information related to the LGDM event, the public
opinion formed by agents (CL ¼ 0.1) will gradually
decrease to 0.175, and the public opinion formed
by agents (CL ¼ 0.5) will drop to 0.275.
Apparently, the false information related to the
LGDM event has a significant effect on the evolu-
tion of public opinion. When agents are highly con-
fident, this effect can be weakened.
As shown in Figure 9a, when agents are with low
confidence levels, it is difficult for Management
Measure I to play a role in the management of pub-
lic opinion. However, as shown in Figure 9c, when
Management Measure I is adopted, agents with high
confidence levels can produce a high value of PO.
By comparing Figure 9a with Figure 9c, we can infer
that agents with high confidence levels can be man-
aged effectively by applying Management Measure I.
Additionally, by analyzing the results presented in
Figure 10, we can infer that when using a large pen-
alty coefficient q1, public opinion can be improved
to a high level within fewer consensus rounds. In
addition, the comprehensive impact of CL and q1
on the efficiency of Management Measure I can be
 JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 15

Figure 7. Average values of IGCD in simulation I. (a) IGCD, (b) N, and (c) h.

Figure 8. Average values of PO under different

Figure 11. Average values of PO in simulation II.
circumstances.

Figure 9. Average values of PO under different values of CL in simulation II. (a) PO (CL ¼ 0.1), (b) PO (CL ¼ 0.3),
(c) PO (CL ¼ 0.5).

Figure 10. Average values of PO under different values of q1 in simulation II. (a) PO (q1 ¼ 0.1), (b) PO (q1 ¼ 0.3), and (c)
PO (q1 ¼ 0.5).

seen in Figure 11, where Figures 9 and 10 can be
obtained by taking cross-sections.
5.2.3. Simulation III
Similar to simulation II, simulation III was designed
to examine whether Management Measure II can
manage public opinion effectively. The main idea of
simulation method III is described as follows.
In the CRP, if agents are unsatisfied with the
result of the LGDM event, they may post some false
information to guide others against the LGDM
event. Through timely, effective communication
16 G.-R. YANG ET AL.

with DMs who often own numbers of followers,
they are willing to raise their support degree to
ensure that the LGDM event can go smoothly. By
replacing the input and Step 12 in simulation
method II, we can obtain simulation method III,
which is described in Algorithm IV.
Figure 12. Average values of PO in simulation III.
In simulation method III, we set different input
parameters q2 ¼ f0, 0:05, :::, 0:3g and CL ¼
f0:1, 0:2, :::, 0:5g: Other relevant parameters are
same as Simulation II. Then, we run the method
1000 times to produce average values of PO. The
results of this process are presented in
Figures 12–14.
Comparing the results shown in Figures 13a
and 13c, we can infer that when agents have low
confidence levels, Management Measure II is more
effective, and the effectiveness of this measure in
managing agents with high confidence levels is
quite limited. The results represented in Figure 14
show that public opinion PO can be improved
more quickly with a large value of q2. Figure 12
reveals the influence of CL and q2 on the effi-
ciency of Management Measure II, in which
Figures 13 and 14 can be obtained by taking
cross-sections.

Figure 13. Average values of PO under different values of CL in simulation III. (a) PO (CL ¼ 0.1), (b) PO (CL ¼ 0.3), and
(c) PO (CL ¼ 0.5).

Figure 14. Average values of PO under different values of q2 in simulation III. (a) PO (q2 ¼ 0.1), (b) PO (q2 ¼ 0.2), and (c)
PO (q2 ¼ 0.3).

Figure 15. Average values of PO and GCD. (a) CL ¼ 0.1 and (b) CL ¼ 0.5.

5.2.4. Simulation IV
In simulation IV, by omitting public management
measures (Steps 11 and 12) in Algorithm I, a trad-
itional CRP without public opinion management
can be obtained as a benchmark to test the effi-
ciency of the POM-CRP for managing pub-
lic opinion.
In this simulation, the parameters are fixed as
q1 ¼ 0:5, q2 ¼ 0:3, and set different input parame-
ters CL ¼ f0:1, 0:5g and h ¼ f0:35, 0:4g: Other rele-
vant parameters are same as Simulation II. Then, we
conduct the experiment 1000 times to obtain aver-
age values of PO and GCD. The results of this pro-
cess are presented in Figure 15.
As can be seen from these figures, using a CRP
without public opinion management measures as a
benchmark, it is clear that the proposed POM-CRP
is effective for public opinion management no mat-
ter agents are highly confident or not. Besides, in
traditional CRP, the modification rate is set as h ¼
0:4, which is not the optimal modification rate
(h
¼ 0:35) for same scale LGDM events. The differ-
ence between the values of GCD is close to 0.02.
The results of the above simulations reveal that:
 When the modification rate is equal to 0.35,
GCD can be improved with the highest effi-
ciency. The number of alternatives N does not
affect h
:
 Management Measure I can effectively manage
public opinion formed by agents with high confi-
dence levels, but it has a limited effect on agents
with low confidence levels.
 Through Management Measure II, agents who
lack confidence can be managed with high effi-
ciency, but agents who are highly confident are
difficult to manage.
 Compared with traditional CRPs without h
and
public opinion management, POM-CRP is effect-
ive to help GCD and PO reach the pre-
set thresholds.
6. Conclusion
In this study, we investigated the evolution of public
opinion in CRPs for public-related LGDM events,
and we propose the POM-CRP as a solution to
matching public opinion formed by agents with the
consensus among DMs. In the proposed model,
agents are divided into different categories based on
their confidence levels, and targeted management
measures are presented to manage the public opin-
ion generated by these different categories of agents.
An acceptance function is designed to predict the
probability of DM acceptance when faced with a
recommendation plan, and this can also be used to
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 17
generate an optimal modification rate h
: By a series
of simulations, it was demonstrated that the POM-
CRP is feasible and efficient for public-related
LGDM events. Moreover, the proposed model is
easy to program and implement in solving public-
related LGDM events (e.g., the siting for NIMBY
facilities and subways) while managing the public
opinion in real life. It can reduce the possibility of
failure of decision-making events due to opposition
of public opinion. The main innovations and theor-
etical contributions of this study are summarized
as follows.
 As shown in Simulation II, false information has
a significant influence on the evolution of public
opinion. A negative public opinion caused by
false information often leads to the failure of
decision-making events. Thus, in the POM-CRP,
the consensus among DMs reaching an accept-
able level is no longer treated as the only criter-
ion for conducting the selection process. Only
when both public opinion and the consensus
reach the required thresholds can the final deci-
sion be made. By applying the proposed model,
the impact of the false information can be
reduced, and consensus among DMs can
be improved.
 By defining the support degree of DMs, DMs’
evaluations are considered in the evolution of
their opinions. Two opinion dynamics models
are developed for DMs and other agents. The
setting rule of relevant parameters (w) in the
opinion dynamics model is further discussed.
 Agents are divided into two different categories
based on their confidence levels, and targeted
management measures are provided to manage
these different categories of agents. For highly
confident agents, the best management measure
is helping them to identify false information and
its poster. For agents with low confidence levels,
the best management measure is improving the
support degree of DMs who often have numbers
of followers on social media. The results of simu-
lations demonstrate the effectiveness of the man-
agement measures.
Future research can be conducted in the follow-
ing directions:
 In a real-life situation, the number of agents who
express their opinions towards a public-related
LGDM event will increase with the development
of the event. It could be an interesting future
research topic to investigate the effect of the
spreading process of public opinion on the evo-
lution of public opinion.
18 G.-R. YANG ET AL.
 In practice, with the development of the deci-
sion-making event, agents may make new friends
with each other. So, it would be interesting to
study the influence of updating of relationships
among agents on the evolution of their opinions.
Notes
1. The public opinion of a decision-making event refers
to the aggregation of opinions of people including
DMs, stakeholders, and others who have expressed
opinions towards the event.
2. The consensus refers to the extent to which all DMs
reach an agreement on a decision-making event.
3. The false information refers to biased opinions or
opinions which present objection too forcefully.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
72001025 and 71772136), the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation (Grant No. 2020M680017), the introduction
project of China Postdoctoral international exchange pro-
gram (Grant No. YJ20200266), the Strategic Research
Grants of the City University of Hong Kong (Grant Nos.
7005193 and 7005380), and the Beijing Institute of
Technology Research Fund Program for Young Scholars.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by
the authors.
ORCID
Guo-Rui Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8189-0946
Ru-Xi Ding http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5414-0728
Jingjun (David) Xu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-
9875-7620
References
Chao, X., Kou, G., Peng, Y., & Herrera-Viedma, E.
(2021a). Large-scale group decision-making with non-
cooperative behaviours and heterogeneous preferences:
An application in financial inclusion. European Journal
of Operational Research, 288(1), 271–293. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.ejor.2020.05.047
Chao, X., Kou, G., Peng, Y., Herrera-Viedma, E., &
Herrera, F. (2021b). An efficient consensus reaching
framework for large-scale social network group deci-
sion making and its application in urban resettlement.
Information Sciences, 575, 499–527. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.ins.2021.06.047
Degroot, M. H. (1974). Reaching a consensus. Journal of
the American Statistical Association, 69(345), 118–121.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1974.10480137
Ding, R.-X., Palomares, I., Wang, X., Yang, G.-R., Liu, B.,
Dong, Y., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Herrera, F. (2020).
Large-Scale decision-making: Characterization, tax-
onomy, challenges and future directions from an artifi-
cial intelligence and applications perspective.
Information Fusion, 59, 84–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.inffus.2020.01.006
Dong, Y., Ding, Z., Martnez, L., & Herrera, F. (2017).
Managing consensus based on leadership in opinion
dynamics. Information Sciences, 397, 187–205.
Dong, Y., Li, C., Xu, Y., & Gu, X. (2015). Consensus-
based group decision making under multi-granular
unbalanced 2-tuple linguistic preference relations.
Group Decision and Negotiation, 24(2), 217–242.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-014-9387-5
Dong, Y., Zhang, H., & Herrera-Viedma, E. (2016).
Integrating experts’ weights generated dynamically into
the consensus reaching process and its applications in
managing non-cooperative behaviours. Decision
Support Systems, 84, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.
2016.01.002
Du, Z. J., Yu, S. M., & Xu, X. H. (2020). Managing non-
cooperative behaviours in large-scale group decision-
making: Integration of independent and supervised
consensus-reaching models. Information Sciences, 531,
119–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2020.03.100
Durrett, R., Gleeson, J. P., Lloyd, A. L., Mucha, P. J., Shi,
F., Sivakoff, D., Socolar, J. E. S., & Varghese, C. (2012).
Graph fission in an evolving voter model. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of Sciences, 109(10),
3682–3687. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1200709109
Friedkin, N. E., & Johnsen, E. C. (1990). Social influence
and opinions. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology,
15(3–4), 193–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250X.
1990.9990069
Gou, X., Xu, Z., Liao, H., & Herrera, F. (2020). Consensus
model handling minority opinions and noncooperative
behaviours in large-scale group decision-making under
double hierarchy linguistic preference relations. IEEE
Transactions on Cybernetics, 51(1), 283–296.
Hegselmann, R., & Krause, U. (2002). Opinion dynamics
and bounded confidence models, analysis and simula-
tion. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social
Simulation, 5(3), 1–2.
Liang, D., and Yi, B., & Xu, Z. (2020). Opinion dynamics
based on infectious disease transmission model in the
non-connected context of Pythagorean fuzzy trust rela-
tionship. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1–21.
Li, C. C., Dong, Y., & Herrera, F. (2019). A consensus
model for large-scale linguistic group decision making
with a feedback recommendation based on clustered
personalized individual semantics and opposing consen-
sus groups. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 27(2),
221–233. https://doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2018.2857720
Li, Y., Kou, G., Li, G., & Wang, H. (2021). Multi-attribute
group decision making with opinion dynamics based
on social trust network. Information Fusion, 75,
102–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2021.04.010
Li, K., Liang, H., Kou, G., & Dong, Y. (2020a). Opinion
dynamics model based on the cognitive dissonance: An
agent-based simulation. Information Fusion, 56, 1–14.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2019.09.006
Li, G., Kou, G., Li, Y., & Peng, Y. (2020b). A group deci-
sion making approach for supplier selection with
multi-period fuzzy information and opinion interaction
among decision makers. Journal of the Operational
Research Society, 1–14.
Lin, C., Kou, G., Peng, Y., & Alsaadi, F. (2020).
Aggregation of the nearest consistency matrices with
the acceptable consensus in AHP-GDM. Annals of
Operations Research, 1–17.

Liu, X., Xu, Y., & Herrera, F. (2019c). Consensus model
for large-scale group decision making based on fuzzy
preference relation with self-confidence: Detecting and
managing overconfidence behaviours. Information
Fusion, 52, 245–256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.
2019.03.001
Liu, B., Zhou, Q., Ding, R., Ni, W., & Herrera, F. (2019a).
Defective alternatives detection-based multi-attribute
intuitionistic fuzzy large-scale decision making model.
Knowledge-Based Systems, 186, 104962. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.knosys.2019.104962
Liu, B., Zhou, Q., Ding, R. X., Palomares, I., & Herrera,
F. (2019b). Large-scale group decision making model
based on social network analysis: Trust relationship-
based conflict detection and elimination. European
Journal of Operational Research, 275(2), 737–754.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2018.11.075
Lu, Y., Xu, Y., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Han, Y. (2021).
Consensus of large-scale group decision making in
social network: The minimum cost model based on
robust optimization. Information Sciences, 547,
910–930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2020.08.022
Palomares, I., Martinez, L., & Herrera, F. (2014). A con-
sensus model to detect and manage noncooperative
behaviours in large-scale group decision making. IEEE
Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 22(3), 516–530. https://
doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2013.2262769
Ren, R., Tang, M., & Liao, H. (2020). Managing minority
opinions in micro-grid planning by a social network
analysis-based large scale group decision making
method with hesitant fuzzy linguistic information.
Knowledge-Based Systems, 189, 105060. https://doi.org/
10.1016/j.knosys.2019.105060
Song, Y., Li, G., Ergu, D., & Liu, N. (2021). An optimisa-
tion-based method to conduct consistency and consen-
sus in group decision making under probabilistic
uncertain linguistic preference relations. Journal of the
Operational Research Society, 1–15.
Tian, Z.-P., Nie, R.-X., & Wang, J.-Q. (2019). Social net-
work analysis-based consensus-supporting framework
for large-scale group decision-making with incomplete
interval type-2 fuzzy information. Information Sciences,
502, 446–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2019.06.053
Appendix A. Abbreviations and notation used in the POM-CRP
Table A1. Abbreviations and notation used in the POM-CRP.
Notation Meaning
X Set of alternatives
D Set of DMs
A Set of agents
E Evaluation matrix of DMs
og Opinion of agent ag
C State vector of agents
z Index of consensus round
PO Public opinion
w1 Weight of public opinion
w3 Weight of other agents’ opinions
/ Support degree
w5 Weight of DM’s support degree

CL Confidence level threshold
q2 Coefficient of Management Measure II

E Recommendation modification plan
PA Probability of DMs accepting the recommendation modification plan
e1 Consensus threshold
EV Evaluation value of alternative
IGCD Increment of group consensus degree in a consensus round
JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY 19
Urena, R., Chiclana, F., Fujita, H., & Herrera-Viedma, E.
(2015). Confidence-consistency driven group decision
making approach with incomplete reciprocal intuition-
istic preference relations. Knowledge-Based Systems, 89,
86–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2015.06.020
Wu, Z., & Xu, J. (2012). Consensus reaching models of
linguistic preference relations based on distance func-
tions. Soft Computing, 16(4), 577–589. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s00500-011-0756-6
Xu, X., Du, Z., Chen, X., & Cai, C. (2019). Confidence
consensus-based model for large-scale group decision
making: A novel approach to managing non-coopera-
tive behaviours. Information Sciences, 477, 410–427.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2018.10.058
Xu, X., Zhang, Q., & Chen, X. (2020). Consensus-based
non-cooperative behaviours management in large-
group emergency decision-making considering experts’
trust relations and preference risks. Knowledge-Based
Systems, 190, 105108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.
2019.105108
Zha, Q., Kou, G., Zhang, H., Liang, H., Chen, X., Li, C.-
C., & Dong, Y. (2020). Opinion dynamics in finance
and business: A literature review and research opportu-
nities. Financial Innovation, 6(1), 1–22.
Zhang, H., Li, C.-C., Liu, Y., & Dong, Y. (2019).
Modelling personalized individual semantics and con-
sensus in comparative linguistic expression preference
relations with self-confidence: An optimization-based
approach. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 29(3),
627–640. https://doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2019.2957259
Zhang, H., Palomares, I., Dong, Y., & Wang, W. (2018).
Managing non-cooperative behaviours in consensus-
based multiple attribute group decision making: An
approach based on social network analysis. Knowledge-
Based Systems, 162, 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
knosys.2018.06.008
Zhang, H., Zhao, S., Kou, G., Li, C.-C., Dong, Y., &
Herrera, F. (2020). An overview on feedback mecha-
nisms with minimum adjustment or cost in consensus
reaching in group decision making: Research para-
digms and challenges. Information Fusion, 60, 65–79.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2020.03.001
Notation Meaning
N Number of alternatives
M Number of DMs
G Number of agents
x Decision weights of DMs
clg Confidence level of agent ag
R Relationship matrix of agents
Zmax Maximum number of consensus round
T Trust matrix of agents
w2 Weight of DMs’ opinions
Ec Collective evaluation
w4 Weight of opinions of agents following DM
CL Average confidence level of all agents
q1 Coefficient of Management Measure I
GCD Group consensus degree
h Modification rate
h
Optimal modification rate
e2 Public opinion threshold
x
Optimal alternative
l False information threshold
20 G.-R. YANG ET AL.

Appendix B. Algorithms Algorithm 2. Simulation method I.

Algorithm 1. The public opinion management-based Input: Zmax , X, D, R, T, and h.

consensus-reaching framework. Step 1: Collect DMs’ initial evaluations E0 .
Step 2: Let z ¼ 0.
Input: Zmax , X, A, D, R, T, C, h, 1, 2, CL, q1, and q2. Step 3: By using Eq. (8), the DMs’ weights xz can
Step 1: Collect DMs’ initial evaluations E0 . be computed.
Step 2: Let z ¼ 0, and Tz ¼ T. Step 4: By applying Eq. (9), GCDz can be calculated.
Step 3: By using Eq. (8), DMs weights xz can Step 5: Provide each DM with a recommendation modifi-
be computed. cation plan E zþ1 , which is calculated by Eq. (10). If DM
Step 4: By applying Eqs. (1) and (9), POz and GCDz can g
dm is willing to accept recommendation modification plan
be calculated.  zþ
E 1
m , go to Step 6-A; otherwise go to Step 6-B.
Step 5: If GCDz  1 and POz  2 , go to Step 14; other-  zþ 1 and go to Step 7.
m ¼ Em
Step 6-A: Let Ezþ1
wise, go to next step. g
Step 6-B: DM dm can provide his/her evaluation E ^ zþ
m
1
Step 6: If z  Zmax , go to Step 16; otherwise, go to next step. according to his/her will. Let Em ¼ E zþ1 ^ zþ 1
and go to
m
Step 7: If GCDz  1 , go to Step 10; otherwise, go to Step 7.
next step. Step 7: Using Eq. (9), GCDzþ1 can be calculated.
Step 8: Provide each DM with a recommendation modifi- Step 8: Let the increment of group consensus
cation plan E  zþ1 , which is calculated by Eq. (10). If DM
g degree IGCD ¼ GCDzþ1 −GCDz .
dm is willing to accept recommendation modification plan Output: IGCD
 zþ
E 1
m , go to Step 9-A; otherwise go to Step 9-B.
Step 9-A: Let Ezþ1 m ¼ Em
 zþ 1 and go to Step 10.
g
Step 9-B: DM dm can provide his/her evaluation E ^ zþ 1
m Algorithm 3. Simulation method II.
according to his/her will. Let Em ¼ E zþ1 ^ m and go to
zþ 1

Step 10.
Step 10: If POz  2 , go to Step 13; otherwise, go to
next step.
Step 11: Calculate the average confidence level of agents CL.
If CL  CL, go to Step 12-A; otherwise, go to Step 12-B.
Step 12-A: Management Measure I is adopted. For agent
ag, if ozg <0, the trust values assigned to him/her t−zþ1
, g will
be reduced to ð1−q1 Þt−z , g , and the deducted part of trust
values q1 t−z , g will be equally divided among the agents
whose individual opinions oz  0. Then, go to Step 13.
Step 12-B: Management Measure II is adopted. For DM
dm who accept the recommendation modification plan,
/zm ¼ /zm þ q2 (if the adjusted /zm >1, then /zm ¼ 1).
Then, go to Step 13.
Step 13: By using Eqs. (2) and (7), ozþ1 can be calculated.
Let z ¼ z þ 1,and go to Step 4.
Step 14: By applying Eq. (12), EV can be calculated.
Step 15: Select and output the optimal alternative x
.
Step 16: The LGDM event failed.
Output: x
.
Input: Zmax , X, A, D, R, T, C, h, 1, 2, and q1.
Step 6: If z  Zmax , output PO; otherwise, go to
next step.
Step 12: Management Measure I is adopted. For agent
ag , if ozg <0, the trust values assigned to him/her t−zþ1,g
will be reduced to ð1−q1 Þt−z , g , and the deducted part of
trust values q1 t−z , g will be equally divided among the
agents whose individual opinions oz  0. Then, go to
Step 13.
Output: PO.
Algorithm 4. Simulation method III.
Input: Zmax , X, A, D, R, T, C, h, 1, 2, and q2.
Step 12: Management Measure II is adopted. For DM dm
who accept the recommendation modification plan, /zm ¼
/zm þ q2 (if the adjusted /zm >1, then /zm ¼ 1). Then, go
to Step 13.