Full text

Turn on search term navigation

Copyright © 2018 Tobias Fasth et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Abstract

One of the core complexities involved in evaluating decision alternatives in the area of public decision-making is to deal with conflicts. The stakeholders affected by and involved in the decision often have conflicting preferences regarding the actions under consideration. For an executive authority, these differences of opinion can be problematic, during both implementation and communication, even though the decision is rational with respect to an attribute set perceived to represent social welfare. It is therefore important to involve the stakeholders in the process and to get an understanding of their preferences. Otherwise, the stakeholder disagreement can lead to costly conflicts. One way of approaching this problem is to provide means for comprehensive, yet effective stakeholder preference elicitation methods, where the stakeholders can state their preferences with respect to actions part of the current agenda of a government. In this paper we contribute two supporting methods: (i) an application of the cardinal ranking (CAR) method for preference elicitation for conflict evaluations and (ii) two conflict indices for measuring stakeholder conflicts. The application of the CAR method utilizes a do nothing alternative to differentiate between positive and negative actions. The elicited preferences can then be used as input to the two conflict indices indicating the level of conflict within a stakeholder group or between two stakeholder groups. The contributed methods are demonstrated in a real-life example carried out in the municipality of Upplands Väsby, Sweden. We show how a questionnaire can be used to elicit preferences with CAR and how the indices can be used to semantically describe the level of consensus and conflict regarding a certain attribute. As such, we show how the methods can provide decision aid in the clarification of controversies.

Details

Title
Measuring Conflicts Using Cardinal Ranking: An Application to Decision Analytic Conflict Evaluations
Author
Fasth, Tobias 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Larsson, Aron 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Love Ekenberg 3 ; Danielson, Mats 3 

 Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Box 7003, SE-164 07 Kista, Sweden 
 Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Box 7003, SE-164 07 Kista, Sweden; Dept. of Information Systems and Technology, Mid Sweden University, SE-851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden 
 Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Box 7003, SE-164 07 Kista, Sweden; International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria 
Editor
Alessandra Oppio
Publication year
2018
Publication date
2018
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISSN
16879147
e-ISSN
16879155
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2116806706
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Tobias Fasth et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/