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The Individual and Collective Outcomes of Decision-Making

Authors:
Monique Borges
João Marques
Eduardo Castro

Keywords: Decision-making; Decision theory; Multi-criteria methods; Preferences; Governance; Policy making.

Abstract:
Solving decision-making problems often depends on the use of methods for multi-criteria evaluation of alternatives. Generally, the challenge relies on the ability to structure long-term goals, while establishing accurate criteria matrices and weights for assessing alternatives. Complexity increases when preference functions become important to define global utilities or determine final rankings. This topic is of high importance for the policy making process, where decisions result from group-thinking and collective processes. Therefore, high levels of subjectivity are associated to the decision process, typically reflected on preferences and options. The application of different software tools or multi-criteria decision-making methods can lead to non-identical outputs. Collective decisions result from aggregation metrics and weighing procedures. This paper discusses the balances of individual and collective decisions, based on the rational choice theory and the shift to behavioural economics. Subsequently, data from decision-making in real practice supports the debate on the use of multi-criteria methods.

Pages: 69 to 74

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4375

ISBN: 978-1-61208-765-8

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020