A Hybrid Attention-Based Expert Weighting and Fractal Fuzzy Decision Support System for Prioritizing Digital Economy Factors Affecting Inflation

This study addresses a fundamental problem in contemporary inflation analysis by examining how digital economy factors influence inflation dynamics in increasingly digitalized economic systems. While digitalization reshapes pricing behavior, consumption patterns, and monetary transmission mechanisms, it remains unclear which digital economy factors exert the strongest influence on inflation and therefore require policy prioritization. The existing literature largely focuses on isolated digital indicators or macroeconomic outcomes, leaving a significant gap in systematically identifying and prioritizing the relative inflationary impacts of multiple digital economy factors. The primary objective of this study is to determine which digital economy factors most strongly affect inflation and to identify the most effective strategies to mitigate digitally driven inflationary pressures. To address this gap, the study proposes a novel decision-making framework that integrates artificial intelligence techniques with fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making models. Based on an extensive literature review, twelve digital economy criteria and eight policy strategies are identified and evaluated using expert judgments. A key methodological contribution of the study is the use of an attention-based expert weighting approach to determine the relative importance of experts, which represents a major novelty by eliminating reliance on demographic characteristics and instead emphasizing consensus distance, structural consistency, and outlier behavior in expert evaluations. In addition, generalized fractal fuzzy sets developed by the authors are incorporated to model complex and nonlinear uncertainty more effectively. Criterion weights are calculated using the MEREC method, while strategic priorities are determined through the ARLON approach. The findings indicate that e-commerce penetration and digital payment system prevalence are the most influential digital economy factors on inflation, while digital price transparency and the expansion of digital payment systems emerge as the most effective mitigation strategies. Overall, the proposed model offers methodological robustness, enhanced reliability, and actionable policy insights, contributing a novel and systematic framework to the inflation and digital economy literature.