  How to manage conflict is still an open issue in Dempster-Shafer evidence
theory. The correlation coefficient can be used to measure the similarity of
evidence in Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. However, existing correlation
coefficients of belief functions have some shortcomings. In this paper, a new
correlation coefficient is proposed with many desirable properties. One of its
applications is to measure the conflict degree among belief functions. Some
numerical examples and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the
correlation coefficient.
