Hybrid strategy for interest-based negotiation

Abstract

Negotiation provides a powerful metaphor for automating the allocation and reallocation of resources in multi-agent systems. Interest-based negotiation (IBN) has been accepted as a promising alternative to the classical negotiation approaches. Reframing is a sub-type of interest-based negotiation strategy. It enhances bargaining by allowing the negotiators to ask for the underlying goal of the negotiation and propose alternative plans which may entail a deal on alternative issues. Agents have two different negotiation strategies available to them, namely bargaining and reframing. This paper presents a hybrid strategy to articulate those two strategies in the agent behavior. Statistical results show that this hybrid strategy reduces the quantity of unsuccessful negotiations. Furthermore, when the negotiation is successful, the proposed hybrid strategy tends to reduce the cost of the plans and improves the benefit made during the deal.