An empirical analysis of elicited weights in AHP

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) requires the decision maker to provide pair wise comparisons to obtain a complete ranking of the alternatives. One of the main concerns of this method is related to the level of consistency needed to produce reliable results. When the decision maker is not consistent enough, resulting scores and weights values are questionable. The aim of this paper is to study the robustness of AHP regarding the use of the eigenvector method (to derive weights and scores) and the consequences of imposing a 9 level scale for the pair wise comparisons. These two points were considered when tackling the problem of weights elicitation for the criteria. To that aim, we use a simulation approach.