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An approach to and computational results on testing the form of a decision maker's utility function
Author(s) -
Murat Köksalan M.,
Sagala Paul N. S.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of multi‐criteria decision analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.462
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1099-1360
pISSN - 1057-9214
DOI - 10.1002/mcda.4020040305
Subject(s) - decision maker , monotonic function , function (biology) , preference , set (abstract data type) , mathematical economics , expected utility hypothesis , regular polygon , utility theory , computer science , decision theory , mathematical optimization , subjective expected utility , decision problem , mathematics , operations research , algorithm , statistics , mathematical analysis , geometry , evolutionary biology , biology , programming language
In this paper we consider the problem of identifying the form of a decision maker's (DM) utility function. We consider a set of alternatives each defined by a number of criteria and we assume that the DM's preferences are consistent with some underlying utility function. We present some theory and develop approaches to test whether the DM's preferences are consistent with a linear, a quasi‐concave, a quasi‐convex or a general monotonic function. We present our computational experience showing that in almost all cases the approaches correctly identify the form of the underlying utility function and require very little preference information of the DM.