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Estimating Utility-Functions for Negotiating Agents: Using Conjoint Analysis as an Alternative Approach to Expected Utility Measurement

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Multiagent System Technologies (MATES 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3550))

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Abstract

Utility-based software agents are especially suited to represent human principals in recurring automatic negotiation applications. In order to work efficiently, utility-based agents need to obtain models of the relevant part of the principal’s preference structure – represented by utility functions. So far agent theory usually applies expected utility measurement. It has, as we will show, certain shortcomings in real life applications. As an alternative, we suggest an approach based on con-joint analysis, which is a well-understood procedure widely used in marketing research and psychology, but gets only small recognition in agent theory. It offers a user-friendly way to derive quantitative utility values for multi-attribute alternatives from the principal’s preferences. In this paper, we introduce the technique in detail along with some extensions and improvements suited for agent applications. Additionally a learning algorithm is derived, keeping track of changes of the principal’s preference structure and adjusting measurement errors.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Information Systems I, University of Trier, 54296, Trier, Germany

    Marc Becker, Hans Czap, Malte Poppensieker & Alexander Stotz

Authors
  1. Marc Becker
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  2. Hans Czap
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  3. Malte Poppensieker
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  4. Alexander Stotz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Information Systems Management, University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstrasse 30, Germany

    Torsten Eymann

  2. Department for Artificial Intelligence, University of Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074, Würzburg

    Franziska Klügl

  3. Distributed Systems and Information Systems, Computer Science Department, University of Hamburg, Vogt–Kölln–Str. 30, 22527, Hamburg, Germany

    Winfried Lamersdorf

  4. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, 66123, Saarbruecken, Germany

    Matthias Klusch

  5. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Carolina, 29208, Columbia, SC, USA

    Michael N. Huhns

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Becker, M., Czap, H., Poppensieker, M., Stotz, A. (2005). Estimating Utility-Functions for Negotiating Agents: Using Conjoint Analysis as an Alternative Approach to Expected Utility Measurement. In: Eymann, T., Klügl, F., Lamersdorf, W., Klusch, M., Huhns, M.N. (eds) Multiagent System Technologies. MATES 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3550. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11550648_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11550648_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28740-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-28741-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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