Agent based model for group decision making

What is it about?

In this paper, a new agent-based model of multi-actor decision-making for Urban Land Use Planning (ULUP) is developed. Several agents attend in a land use planning meeting; they apply different spatial metrics to evaluate the spatial configuration of land uses from their own viewpoints. In addition to introducing a specific negotiation mechanism, it also is considered that agents are socially rational. In almost all of the recent works, the dominant decision-making philosophy in agent design has been to equate rationality with the notion of an individual maximizing a self-biased utility function. Thus, an agent's motivation is the maximization of benefits with regards to his own goals. Therefore, they have missed the role of social parameters in negotiations. Potentially, social parameters such as altruism and selfishness play an important role in group decision-making process (e.g., Arentze, 2015). Altruism refers to a willingness to benefit others, even at one's own expense. Selfishness, the opposite of altruism, refers to prioritizing one's own interests, with a concomitant lack of consideration for others (Saito, 2015). Following Arentze (2015), it is considered that the agents use a social utility concept for evaluating other agents' proposal. A social utility function describes how individuals deal with their and other agents' preferences. It is assumed that agents act like selfish agents in earlier rounds of meeting and bypassing the time, they become more willing to assign higher weights to other agents' preferences (altruism) in order to reach an agreement.

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Why is it important?

- Developing an agent-based Urban Land Use Planning (ULUP) model of multi-actor decision-making.