Purpose Given the same mixed attribute alternatives, the decision-making result determined by different decision-making basis (DMB)- based generalized grey target decision method (GGTDM) for mixed attributes may be different owing to the different mechanisms of each DMB. To obtain the desired decision-making result that individual GGTDM could not have, a combination GGTDM for mixed attributes based on cooperative game theory is proposed to fulfill this task. Design/methodology/approach Different DMB-based GGTDMs for mixed attributes are regarded as different players in a cooperative game. The characteristic values of different game alliances can be calculated through the method of weighted reciprocal of variance, depending on the error information matrices that originated from the differences between the combination decision-making results and the referenced decision-making results. Then the model for Shapley values of game alliances is built. The weights of GGTDMs can be achieved by normalizing the Shapley values of all players (GGTDMs). Next, the combination decision-making values can be calculated relying on integrating the decision-making values obtained by different GGTDMs with the cooperative game-based weights. Finally, the decision-making is based on the combination decision-making value of each alternative, with which the smaller the better. Findings The proposed combination GGTDM based on cooperative game theory proves to be feasible and effective in its employment. Originality/value The originality of the proposed approach lies in the Shapley value is adopted to be as a tool to obtain the weight of each GGTDM to take part in the combination decision-making.
Ma et al. (2026) studied this question.