A Novel Multicriteria Decision‐Making Approach Incorporating Pythagorean Hesitant Fuzzy Sets for Endangered Species Habitat Selection

Pythagorean hesitant fuzzy sets (PHFSs) effectively represent uncertain information in decision‐making by accommodating situations where the sum of membership and nonmembership degrees exceeds 1, provided their squared sum remains at most 1. This study proposes a novel distance measure for PHFSs and rigorously demonstrates its rationality and validity. By integrating this distance measure with conflict analysis, we define the conflict degree in Pythagorean hesitant fuzzy environments. Then a new multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM) method is developed to address problems with completely unknown criterion weights, avoiding artificial data manipulation based on decision‐makers’ risk preferences. The proposed distance measure serves as a key tool for quantifying dissimilarity between PHFSs while maintaining decision consistency and reliability. Finally, an illustrative example of habitat selection evaluation for endangered species, accompanied by comparative analysis, validates the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.