A heuristic personality-based bilateral multi-issue bargaining model in electronic commerce

  • Authors:

  • Faria Nassiri-Mofakham;Mohammad Ali Nematbakhsh;Nasser Ghasem-Aghaee;Ahmad Baraani-Dastjerdi

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Technology Engineering, University of Isfahan (UI), P.O. Code 81746-73441, Hezar Jerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran and Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan ...;Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan (UI), P.O. Code 81746-73441, Hezar Jerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran;Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan (UI), P.O. Code 81746-73441, Hezar Jerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran;Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan (UI), P.O. Code 81746-73441, Hezar Jerib Avenue, Isfahan, Iran

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Our everyday lives and specially our commercial transactions involve complex negotiations that incorporate decision-making in a multi-issue setting under utility constraints. Negotiation as a key stage in all commercial transactions has been proliferated by applying decision support facilities that AI techniques provide. Recently, Distributed Artificial Intelligence techniques have been evolved towards multi-agent systems (MASs) where each agent is an intelligent system that solves a specific problem. Incorporating MAS into e-commerce negotiation and bargaining has brought even more potential improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of business systems by automating several of the most time consuming and repetitive stages of the buying process. In bargaining, participants with opposing interests communicate and try to find mutually beneficial agreements by exchanging compromising proposals. However, recent studies on commercial bargaining and negotiation in MASs lack a personality model. Indeed, adding personality to intelligent agents makes them more human-like and increases their flexibility. We investigate the role of personality behaviors of participants in multi-criteria bilateral bargaining in a single-good e-marketplace, where both parties are OCEAN agents based on the five-factor (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Negative emotions) model of personality. We do not aim to determine strategies that humans should use in negotiation, but to present a more human-like model to enhance the realism of rational bargaining behavior in MASs. First, this study presents a computational approach based on a heuristic bargaining protocol and a personality model, and second, considers the issue of what personality traits and behaviors should be investigated in relation to automated negotiations. We show the results obtained via the simulation on artificial stereotypes. The results suggest and model compound personality style behaviors appropriate to gain the best overall utility in the role of buyer and seller agents and with regard to social welfare and market activeness. This personality-based approach can be used as a predictive or descriptive model of human behavior to adopt in appropriate situations in many areas involving negotiation and bargaining (e.g., commerce, business, politics, military, etc.) for conflict prevention and resolution. This model can be applied as a testbed for comparing personality models against each other based on human data in different negotiation domains.