A qualitative decision making model based on belief linguistic rule based inference methodology

Abstract

This paper focuses on an inference methodology based on a belief linguistic rule base (B-LRB) for qualitative decision support. It is termed 'linguistic rule-base' instead of 'fuzzy rule-base' because the use of membership functions associated with the linguistic terms are unnecessary or do not play a key role. The features of B-LRB, the ways to generate a B-LRB, and the inference procedure based on B-LRB are specified, along with an illustrate example applied to evaluate consumer trustworthiness in Internet marketing to show how it works, its applicability and feasibility.