Compromise Options Research Articles

How thinking style influences online consumers’ responses to compromise-based service attributes

ABSTRACT Prior studies on online shopping behavior have been silent about global consumers’ compromise choices in online service attributes. Three studies investigate how and when consumers’ thinking styles affect their service responses toward online retail websites offering compromise options. The priming findings demonstrate that consumers in two cultural groups (Korea and France) are more satisfied with and more likely to repurchase from compromise-based websites in the holistic-thinking than analytic-thinking condition. This research contributes to extant literature on consumer online behavior and provides managerial insights on the practical uses of compromise tendencies for online service strategies in global retail markets.

Fair group decisions via non-deterministic proportional consensus

AbstractAre there group decision methods which (i) give everyone, including minorities, an equal share of effective decision power even when voters act strategically, (ii) promote consensus and equality, rather than polarization and inequality, and (iii) do not favour the status quo or rely too much on chance? We describe two non-deterministic group decision methods that meet these criteria, one based on automatic bargaining over lotteries, the other on conditional commitments to approve compromise options. Using theoretical analysis, agent-based simulations and a behavioral experiment, we show that these methods prevent majorities from consistently suppressing minorities, which can happen in deterministic methods, and keeps proponents of the status quo from blocking decisions, as in other consensus-based approaches. Our simulations show that these methods achieve aggregate welfare comparable to common voting methods, while employing chance judiciously, and that the welfare costs of fairness and consensus are small compared to the inequality costs of majoritarianism. In an incentivized experiment with naive participants, we find that a sizable fraction of participants prefers to use a non-deterministic voting method over Plurality Voting to allocate monetary resources. However, this depends critically on their position within the group. Those in the majority show a strong preference for majoritarian voting methods.

A compromise decision-support technique with an augmented scoring function within circular intuitionistic fuzzy settings

The VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method provides a valuable means of evaluating options based on assessment criteria, intending to generate the finest compromise options through multiple-criteria optimization. However, decision-making often involves uncertainty, where decision-makers may lack complete information or struggle to predict outcomes accurately. Circular intuitionistic fuzzy (C-IF) sets offer a versatile way to represent uncertainty and indecision, adding circularity to intuitionistic fuzzy sets' membership and non-membership. C-IF sets bring sophistication by incorporating circular functions to address complicated ambiguity, alongside assigning membership and non-membership components. This research aims to create a C-IF VIKOR decision-support method to handle multiple-criteria compromise solutions with C-IF uncertainties. The study focuses on enhancing the augmented scoring function and Chebyshev distance metric in C-IF surroundings. The augmented scoring function exhibits unique characteristics, including a direct relationship between membership and function value, an inverse correlation with nonmembership, and reflection of information reliability. The enhanced C-IF Chebyshev distance measure combines radial and membership/nonmembership distances, considering their special features. The proposed C-IF VIKOR technique utilizes these concepts to identify superior and inferior options and determine the finest compromise solution using an identification mechanism and VIKOR indices. The method is demonstrated in the context of healthcare waste disposal and will undergo sensitivity analyses and comparative studies to showcase its advantages, adaptability, and robustness.

Giving more detailed information about health insurance encourages consumers to choose compromise options.

To investigate how the provision of additional information about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan affect the level of coverage chosen by young adults taking their first full time job. University students were recruited for a study at two behavioral laboratories (one located at the University of Toronto and the other located at INSEAD-Sorbonne University in Paris) in which they imagine they are making choices about the healthcare coverage associated with the taking a new job in Chicago, Illinois. Every participant made choices in four categories: Physician Care, Clinical Care, Hospital Care, and Dental Care. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Low Detail or High Detail coverage information and they chose between three levels of coverage: Basic, Enhanced, and Superior. The study took place in March 2017 with 120 students in Toronto and 121 students in Paris. The provision of more detailed information about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan leads to a compromise effect in which participants shift their choices significantly towards Enhanced (moderate coverage) from Basic (low coverage) and Superior (high coverage). The compromise effect was observed at both locations; however, Paris participants choose significantly higher levels of coverage than Toronto participants. Providing more detail to employees about the health events and procedures covered by a healthcare plan will increase the fraction of employees who choose the intermediate level of coverage. It is beyond the scope of this study to conclude whether this is good or bad; however, in a context where employees gravitate to either insufficient or excessive coverage, providing additional detail may reduce these tendencies.

Критическое мышление в системе высшего образования за рубежом

The article defines the features of understanding critical thinking and the features of its formation. The need for its formation is determined by the requirements of the labor market, the demand for a new type of ‘knowledge’ worker, as well as the criteria and goals of higher education. Successful formation of critical thinking involves specifying its understanding and highlighting its main characteristics. The main lines of understanding critical thinking are defined: critical thinking in the broad and narrow senses; critical thinking in accordance with ‘frontier’ publications; critical thinking depending on the professional field of study and application. Based on a critical analysis of English-language literature, including review articles, the main approaches to understanding critical thinking are identified and systematized: philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, media. The features of each of the approaches are determined. The philosophical approach is focused on the dominance of the logical component of critical thinking. Within the framework of the philosophical approach, the ideal image of a critical thinker is considered. Accordingly, the specific circumstances of solving the problem, the essence of the problem, and the participants are not taken into account. The psychological approach concentrates on identifying specific operations of critical thinking. It takes into account circumstances, behavior, participants, motives, etc. The pedagogical approach is based on empirical data. It aims to address issues related to the definition of specific methods for teaching critical thinking and ways to check the results. In recent decades, the media approach to understanding and the development of critical thinking has been actively developing. It emphasizes such a component of critical thinking as working with information. It has been determined that the best option for understanding critical thinking is the so-called ‘compromise options’, including the ‘Delphi’ report. It integrates cognitive skills and dispositions. The former includes: interpretation, analysis, evaluation, conclusion, explanation, self-reflection and self-examination. The second: the desire for truth, openness of thinking, analytic, systematic thinking.

Harmonization of interests during Arctic industrial development: The case of mining corporation and indigenous peoples in Russia

The article discusses the mechanism of coordination and harmonization of the interests between indigenous peoples and a mining company during projects implementation on the Arctic industrial development. The purpose of the study is to substantiate methodological approaches for taking into account the interests of the local population when choosing compensation projects in the area of planned mining activities. The hypothesis of the study is the possibility of finding compromise options between field development and economic interests of the local community. The case of extraction project in Anabar national (Dolgan-Evenki) region of Yakutia shows that insufficient consideration of the indigenous interests can lead to conflicts. The methodology of the research consists of the concept of benefit sharing, impact assessment, sociological research. To assess the degree of interaction between the mining company and the local community, a matrix of the balance of their interests has been developed, coupled with an optimization model for the formation of an optimal set of compensation projects. In Results the authors present the methodological tools to provide economic guarantees of the rights of the indigenous peoples during Arctic industrial development.

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Ranking of transport network development projects in the Sverdlovsk railroad area based on fuzzy logic

Relevance. Due to the turbulence of economic processes in the period of sanctions pressure on the economy, decisions should be made, effective, first of all, from a national position. For this purpose, it is necessary to justify them using multi-criteria and all available information, which at the initial stages is fundamentally incomplete, insufficiently reliable and sometimes weakly formalized. In such cases, it is advisable to use special methods to assess the decisions made in conditions of uncertainty, in particular methods of fuzzy logic and mathematics. Purpose of the study. The study is aimed at assessing the order of priority of transport rail support on the investigated most important in the federal and regional scale main lines by including the most significant technological and economic criteria, reflecting the nationwide priority. Data and Methods. To compare different methods of priority construction of the main lines of railway lines, we used the procedure of fuzzy multi-criteria analysis of the projects. The assumed priorities of transport rail support are based on four trunk line projects: the Middle Urals Latitudinal Railway on the N-Tagil - Perm section; the Troitsko-Pechorsk - Ivdel section; the Perm - Chernushka section; the Ust - Aha - Uray - Khanty-Mansiysk - Salym section. Results. The paper proves the possibility of applying the approach based on fuzzy logic to the analysis of economic processes in the period of shocks to the economy, caused, in particular, by the introduction of sanctions from unfriendly countries. The estimated priority of transport rail support on the four projects of the most important trunk lines is assessed. Conclusions. With the help of fuzzy logic methods, it is possible to find compromise options that satisfy the various interests of those affecting the decisions, regardless of the structural organization of the backbone industries, one of which is undoubtedly the transport industry.

COVID-19 and Extremeness Aversion: The Role of Safety Seeking in Travel Decision Making

Combining conceptual perspectives from emerging research on COVID-19, safety-seeking motivations, and extremeness aversion in choice (i.e., compromise effects), we examine how and why the perceived threat of COVID-19 affects consumers’ choice and decision making in the hotel and restaurant domains. Across seven studies (two studies from secondary data sets and five experimental studies), we provide novel evidence that the perceived threat or threat salience of COVID-19 amplifies the general tendency to select compromise options, avoiding extreme ones, within a choice set. We highlight the role of safety-seeking motivations as the underlying mechanism in the relationship between perceived threat and extremeness aversion in choice. We further document a boundary condition that the extremeness aversion effect is stronger for leisure travelers than for business travelers.

Adopting Multiactor Multicriteria Analysis for the Evaluation of Energy Scenarios

The assessment of future options and pathways for sustainable energy systems requires considering multiple techno-economic, ecological and social issues. Multicriteria analysis methods, which are useful tools that aid decision processes involving various and even conflicting qualitative and quantitative criteria, could support such comprehensive analyses. With regard to energy policies, the key actors and stakeholders’ acceptance of emerging and innovative technologies for generating, converting and storing electricity, heat and fuels is crucial for their future implementation. The multiactor multicriteria (MAMCA) methodology was developed to involve stakeholders with vastly different views and objectives when addressing complex societal problems. We extend the MAMCA methodology to include the outranking approach PROMETHEE, which allows us to explicitly consider the stakeholders’ objectives in the evaluation process. The MAMCA method with PROMETHEE is applied to a case study of four different transition pathways of providing electricity to a bioenergy village in Germany. The explicit mapping at hand of an illustrative case study could help researchers and decision makers greatly in the assessment of pathways for sustainable energy systems; it is also applicable in other contexts requiring extensive stakeholder involvement and where qualitative and quantitative criteria are to be considered simultaneously. The detailed sensitivity analysis provided by the extension of the MAMCA method with PROMETHEE not only reveals the stakeholders’ crucial trade-offs when allowing each stakeholder group to develop its own set of criteria and weights but also indicates compromise options.

Interpreting the Will of the People: A Positive Analysis of Ordinal Preference Aggregation

We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members’ ordinal preferences – that is, how they interpret “the will of the people.” In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they apparently deploy. Majoritarianism is rare. Instead, people employ rules that place greater weight on compromise options. The classification’s fit is excellent, and clustering analysis reveals that it does not omit important rules. We ask whether rules are stable across domains, whether people impute cardinal utility from ordinal ranks, and whether attitudes toward aggregation differ across countries with divergent traditions.

Prospects for development of advertising graphics in the traditional and digital media

The visualization is becoming an increasingly important area of research and has a wide range of applications. The aim of this article is to compare the visual means of advertisements from traditional (print advertising, poster, outdoor) to digital media (internet ads). The trans system and multimodal methodological approaches are applied, which made it possible to using system-structural, socio-cultural, and comparative methods. The style and prospects for the development of Advertising Graphics in the first half of XXI cent. have been determined. Based on the analysis of modern trends, the stylistics of Advertising Graphics are noted: the preservation of distinct styles and monocultures; the dominance of compromise options (fusion, mixing, conscious eclecticism, variability of perception); the simultaneous coexistence of many styles (polystylism); the conceptual search for new styles; and conscious return to the origins of ethno-cultures, further rethinking of folk themes, generalization and decorativeness of Folk Art. We predict in Future the priority of functional, minimalist and polygonal styles, for some categories and services — ethno style (for food, clothing, footwear, accessories, tourism, etc.). Metaphor and other methods of visualization (hyperbole, metonymy, allegory, association) will remain the art-stylistic devices in Advertising. It is obvious that traditional media, in particular posters, will be preserved, but at the same time,there will be a gradual disappearance of print advertising and outdoor transformation towards increasing digitalization. The scientific results obtained will be great importance at the theoretical, practical and educational levels, and in general, will promote the development of Advertising Design in Ukraine. The author emphasizes that the Poster retains the position of the main advertising media, despite the rapid development of computer technologies and virtual space, and considers media design as a qualitatively new stage in the socio-cultural designing of communications and the most promising type of Design.

Fair and efficient collective decisions via nondeterministic proportional consensus

Are there collective decision methods which (i) give everyone, including minorities, an equal share of effective power even if voters act strategically, (ii) promote consensus and equality, rather than polarization and inequality, and (iii) do not favour the status quo or rely too much on chance? We show the answer is yes by describing two nondeterministic group decision methods, one based on automatic bargaining over lotteries, the other on conditional commitments to approve compromise options. Our theoretical analysis and agent-based simulation experiments show that, when these group decision methods are used, majorities cannot consistently suppress minorities as with deterministic group decision methods, proponents of the status quo cannot block decisions as in other consensus-based approaches, the resulting aggregate welfare is comparable to that provided by other common voting methods, and the average amount of chance employed by the method is lower than for other nondeterministic methods. Our results suggest that the welfare costs of fairness and consensus are small compared to the inequality costs of majoritarianism. [PDF contains the 20 pages manuscript and 61 pages of appendices]

Métodos multicriterio aplicados en la selección de un material para discos de freno

La selección de material para un componente automotor es un proceso complejo, porque implica una exploración de los principales criterios de acuerdo con las propiedades exigidas por el componente a diseñar. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo evaluar un material alterno en la fabricación de un disco de freno en vehículos livianos tipo SUV, a partir de los métodos multicriterio; para lo cual se toman en consideración cinco materiales candidatos para la aplicación deseada (Ti6Al4V, Al10Si C, AISI 304L, ASTM A 536 y ASTM A48). Los métodos multicriterio (MCDM) empleados son: VIKOR – la optimización multidisciplinar y solución de compromiso; ELECTRE I – eliminación y opciones que reflejan la realidad; COPRAS – evaluación compleja proporcional; ARAS – evaluación de relación de aditivos; MOORA – optimización multiobjetivo basado en el análisis de radios y el método ENTROPÍA que se emplea para la ponderación de los criterios. Se obtiene que la mejor alternativa es el material ASTM A536 según los métodos COPRAS, ELECTRE I, y ARAS por su baja densidad, un alto límite elástico y una buena resistencia a la compresión; en segunda opción es el ASTM A48 según VIKOR y MOORA.

Introduction to Special Issue: The Habit-Driven Consumer

Introduction to Special Issue: The Habit-Driven Consumer

Критериальный подход к поиску токовых режимов работы термоэлектрических устройств повышенной надежности

The authors consider possibilities of the criterial approach to determining the current operating mode of a single-stage thermoelectric cooling unit (TCU), when used reliability failure rate as a basic parameter. The relations were obtained for determining the current operating mode of a TCU with a given geometry of the branches for different operating conditions, taking into account a variety of restrictive requirements. The paper presents a comparative analysis of current conditions close to the maximum energy efficiency and minimum modes failure rate, which allows choosing compromise options.

Men and the Middle: Gender Differences in Dyadic Compromise Effects

Individual decision makers show robust tendencies toward choosing compromise options. But what happens when consumers make choices with someone else? This article examines the choice of compromise options in joint dyadic decisions. Findings reveal that preferences for compromise alternatives replicate in mixed-gender and female-female dyads as among individuals but are attenuated when two males make a choice together. Moreover, when two males make joint choices, their tendency to choose the compromise alternative decreases not only relative to other types of pairs but also to male and female individual decision makers. Evidence is presented that this happens because male-male dyadic contexts cue gender dichotomization, behavior that is consistent with masculine but not feminine gender norms. Because the extremity in decision making is maximally consistent with masculine but not feminine gender role norms, male-male dyads exhibit lower preferences for compromise options. However, if men have an opportunity to signal masculinity to one another prior to making joint compromise choices, male-male dyads prefer compromise options at proportions no different from female-female dyads. This work brings together the judgment and decision-making literature with insights from the social psychology literature, identifying a case when gender role norms have profound influences on classic judgment and decision-making effects.

Consumer Behavior in “Equilibrium”: How Experiencing Physical Balance Increases Compromise Choice

The authors propose that the physical sensation of balance can affect consumer judgments and decisions. A series of six experiments demonstrates that certain consumer behaviors, such as leaning back in a chair while shopping online, can activate the concept of balance and thereby affect the consumer decision-making process. Specifically, consumers experiencing a heightened sense of balance are more likely to choose compromise options. The authors propose and show evidence for the mechanism underlying these effects: that the concept of balance is metaphorically linked in the mind to the concept of parity and that activating balance increases the accessibility of the parity concept. The increased accessibility of parity changes consumer perceptions of the product offerings in a choice set, increasing the selection of compromise options because they provide parity on the described product attributes.

On the Heritability of Consumer Decision Making: An Exploratory Approach for Studying Genetic Effects on Judgment and Choice

While constructed preferences have received a great deal of attention, there has been virtually no research regarding the genetic basis of consumer judgment and choice. In this research, we examine a wide range of previously unexplored heritable effects on consumer choices and judgments. Moreover, whereas prior research on heritable traits has typically employed a piecemeal approach, demonstrating each heritable trait separately, we propose an alternative way to simultaneously explore common mechanisms and links among heritable traits and behaviors. Using a classic twins study design, we find a large heritable effect on preferences for (a) compromise (but not dominating) options, (b) sure gains, (c) an upcoming feasible, dull assignment, (d) maximizing, (e) utilitarian options, and (f) certain products. Conversely, we do not find significant heritable effects regarding judgment heuristics, discounting, and other decision problems. We tentatively propose that the pattern of findings might reflect a generic...

Quantitative Evaluation of DC Microgrids Availability: Effects of System Architecture and Converter Topology Design Choices

This paper presents a quantitative method to evaluate dc microgrids availability by identifying and calculating minimum cut sets occurrence probability for different microgrid architectures and converter topologies. Hence, it provides planners with an essential tool to evaluate downtime costs and decide technology deployments based on quantitative risk assessments by allowing to compare the effect that converter topologies and microgrid architecture choices have on availability. Conventional architectures with single-input converters and alternative configurations with multiple-input converters (MICs) are considered. Calculations yield that all microgrid configurations except those utilizing center converters achieve similar availability of 6-nines. Three converter topologies are used as representatives of many other circuits. These three benchmark circuits are the boost, the isolated SEPIC (ISEPIC), and the current-source half-bridge. Marginal availability differences are observed for different circuit topology choices, although architectures with MICs are more sensitive to this choice. MICs and, in particular, the ISEPIC, are identified as good compromise options for dc microgrids source interfaces. The analysis also models availability influence of local energy storage, both in batteries and generators' fuel. These models provide a quantitative way of comparing dc microgrids with conventional backup energy systems. Calculations based on widely accepted data in industry supports the analysis.