A mechanism of persuasion among agents for group choice design support systems

✍ Scribed by Takayuki Ito; Toramatsu Shintani

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 254 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0882-1666
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-684x(199805)29:5<20::aid-scj3>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

In this paper, we propose a group decision support system based on persuasion among agents. In the system, each user manages an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) system and an agent. Each user subjectively constructs a decision hierarchy and determines the various weights of alternatives by using AHP. Based on the hierarchy and weights, agents negotiate with each other on behalf of their users. In general, existing systems use a voting method for negotiating among agents. However, the result of voting are often inconsistent, largely due to the inconsistency of voting rules. Therefore, we propose a persuasion mechanism, rather than voting methods, for negotiation among agents. Adopting some of the features of AHP, we implement a new persuasion mechanism. The agents have an explanation mechanism. They can explain to their users why they have been persuaded, when they are persuaded, who persuaded them, and how they are persuaded. Finally, we describe the results from our current experiments. The results demonstrate that the persuasion mechanism is an effective method for a group decision support system based on multi-agent negotiation.