Preference Profiles Research Articles

Individual representation in approval-based committee voting

AbstractWhen selecting multiple candidates based on approval preferences of voters, the proportional representation of voters’ opinions is an important and well-studied desideratum. Existing criteria for evaluating the representativeness of outcomes focus on groups of voters and demand that sufficiently large and cohesive groups are “represented” in the sense that candidates approved by some group members are selected. Crucially, these criteria say nothing about the representation of individual voters, even if these voters are members of groups that deserve representation. In this paper, we formalize the concept of individual representation (IR) and explore to which extent, and under which circumstances, it can be achieved. We show that checking whether an IR outcome exists is computationally intractable, and we verify that all common approval-based voting rules may fail to provide IR even in cases where this is possible. We then focus on domain restrictions and establish an interesting contrast between “voter interval” and “candidate interval” preferences. This contrast can also be observed in our experimental results, where we analyze the attainability of IR for realistic preference profiles.

The implementability of liberalism

AbstractThis note shows that under the unrestricted domain, there exists a choice liberal and Nash implementable social choice rule if and only if there are at least three players and the outcome set is at least twice as large as the player set. A social choice rule is choice liberal if and only if for every player, there exists at least one pair of outcomes such that if this player strictly prefers one over the other, the one he prefers is socially desirable and the other one is not. A social choice rule is Nash implementable if and only if there exists a mechanism such that at every preference profile, the set of Nash equilibrium outcomes coincides with the set of socially desirable ones. The proof constructs an intuitive Nash implementing mechanism.

Assessing the indoor soundscape approach among university students' home study places

University students spend a considerable time at study places. The acoustical quality of these study places is one of the indoor environmental qualities (IEQ) that can have an impact on student's health, comfort, and performance. The indoor soundscape approach has been introduced to better understand occupants' sound perception and experience of sounds in relation to the environment. This study aims to explore the indoor soundscapes of home study places of these students by conducting semi-structured interviews with 23 university students with different profiles. For qualitative analysis, open coding was used. Sub-categories, based on the codes, and categories were created and assigned to the soundscape themes that are defined in ISO 12913-1. An affinity diagram consisting of the themes, categories, and sub-categories was initially developed. Then, it was validated through two workshops with participants. The results showed that the interpretation of the sound environment, responses, and outcomes differed among the students. In a previous study, 451 students were clustered in 5 clusters with similar acoustical preferences (profiles). Therefore, it is recommended to consider making the indoor soundscape approach applicable for different profiles of occupants.

Residents' perceptions of what makes feedback valuable in workplace-based learning: A discrete choice experiment.

Research on feedback has shifted emphasis away from its 'delivery' to consideration of the interaction between individual learners and their 'feedback provider'. The complexity inherent in determining whether feedback is perceived as valuable by learners, however, can quickly overwhelm educators if every interaction must be considered completely idiosyncratic. We, therefore, require a better understanding of variability in the ways in which feedback is perceived. To that end, we ran a discrete choice experiment aimed at determining residents' preferences and whether discernible patterns exist across learners regarding factors that influence perceptions of feedback's learning value. We performed a discrete choice experiment in which respondents were asked to read a clinical case and select repetitively between two feedback scenarios that differed according to six attributes identified from the literature as influencing feedback credibility: Dialogue, Focus, Relationship, Situation, Source and Valence. By systematically varying the levels of each attribute contained in the scenarios and asking residents to choose which from each pair they deemed more valuable for learning, a mixed logit model and latent class analysis could be applied to determine learners' feedback preferences and whether clusters of preference exist. Ninety-five elderly care medicine residents in the Netherlands completed the questionnaire. Their responses indicated that Valence, Dialogue, Relationship and Focus each accounted for about 20% of their preferences regarding the type of feedback perceived to offer the most learning value. Source and Situation were less influential, each accounting for 11% of the choices made. A latent class model with three clusters of respondents best accounted for the heterogeneity in feedback preferences. A total of 62% of respondents could be assigned to one of the three profiles with at least 80% probability. None of the respondents' characteristics (seniority, residency programme nor sex) were related to the feedback preference profile. Our findings suggest that 'how' feedback is provided has a greater influence on perceived learning value than who provides it. That said, variability exists in resident perceptions with no evidence (as yet) of factors that predict individual preferences. As such, tailoring to the needs and reactions of individual learners is likely to require open and ongoing conversations, and we recommend using the learner profiles generated through this study as a starting point because they provide classifications that could facilitate effective connections for the majority of residents.

Treatment Preferences in Patients with Hypothyroidism: an Analysis of Eleven Randomized Controlled Trials.

Levothyroxine (L-T4) monotherapy is the standard of care for the treatment of hypothyroidism. A minority of the L-T4-treated patients remain symptomatic and report better outcomes with combination therapy that contains liothyronine (L-T3) or with desiccated thyroid extract (DTE). To assess patient preferences in the treatment of hypothyroidism. A systematic review, meta-analysis, meta-regression, and network meta-analysis (NMA) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing treatments for adults with hypothyroidism (L-T4 vs. L-T4+L-T3 or DTE). Searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases up to April 10, 2024. Data extraction and quality assessment were independently performed by four researchers. Eleven RCTs (eight cross-over studies) with a total of 1,135 patients were considered. Overall, 24% of patients preferred L-T4 versus 52 % who preferred L-T4+L-T3 or DTE; 24% had no preference. The meta-analysis confirmed the preference for combination therapy over L-T4 monotherapy (RR: 2.20, 95% CI: 1.38 to 3.52; p = 0.0009). Excluding four studies reduced the high heterogeneity (I2 = 81%) without affecting the results (RR: 1.97, 95% CI: 1.52 to 2.54; p < 0.00001; I2 = 24%). This preference profile remained when only crossover studies were considered (RR: 2.84, 95% CI: 1.50 to 5.39; p < 0.00001). Network meta-analysis confirmed the preference for DTE and L-T3+L-T4 versus L-T4 alone. Patients with hypothyroidism prefer combination therapy (L-T3+L-T4 or DTE) over L-T4 monotherapy. The strength of these findings justifies considering patient preferences in the setting of shared decision-making in the treatment of hypothyroidism.

Fair and efficient allocations when preferences are single-dipped

One unit of an infinitely divisible and non-disposable commodity has to be allocated among a group of agents with single-dipped preferences. We combine Pareto optimality with equal treatment of equals, the equal division lower bound, the equal division core, envy-freeness, and group envy-freeness. For each of these fairness requirements, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for compatibility with Pareto optimality and we characterize all corresponding allocations for each preference profile.

Correction: Value preference profiles and ethical compliance quantification: a new approach for ethics by design in technology-assisted dementia care

Correction: Value preference profiles and ethical compliance quantification: a new approach for ethics by design in technology-assisted dementia care

Truthful aggregation of budget proposals with proportionality guarantees

We study a participatory budgeting problem, where a set of strategic agents wish to split a divisible budget among different projects, by aggregating their proposals on a single division. Unfortunately, the straightforward rule that divides the budget proportionally is susceptible to manipulation. Recently, a class of truthful mechanisms has been proposed, namely the moving phantom mechanisms. One such mechanism satisfies the proportionality property, in the sense that in the extreme case where all agents prefer a single project to receive the whole amount, the budget is assigned proportionally.While proportionality is a naturally desired property, it is defined over a limited type of preference profiles. To address this, we expand the notion of proportionality, by proposing a quantitative framework that evaluates a budget aggregation mechanism according to its worst-case distance from the proportional allocation. Crucially, this is defined for every preference profile. We study this measure on the class of moving phantom mechanisms, and we provide approximation guarantees. For two projects, we show that the Uniform Phantom mechanism is optimal among all truthful mechanisms. For three projects, we propose a new, proportional mechanism that is virtually optimal among all moving phantom mechanisms. Finally, we provide impossibility results regarding the approximability of moving phantom mechanisms.

Preference manipulations lead to the uniform rule

For the problem of fully allocating a social endowment of a commodity among a group of agents with single-peaked preferences, we study the consequences of manipulation for several families of rules that are not strategy-proof. Given a rule and a true preference profile, we consider the induced direct revelation game, and characterize its equilibrium allocations in terms of the profile. Our results are unequivocal: for any rule we consider, and for each true preference profile, there is a unique Nash equilibrium allocation. For the profile, it is the allocation of the uniform rule (Sprumont, 1991), the unique strategy-proof, efficient, and symmetric rule in this literature. These conclusions are drawn from two distinct sets of assumptions on the rules.

A Model-Free Approach for Solving Choice-Based Competitive Facility Location Problems Using Simulation and Submodularity

This paper considers facility location problems in which a firm entering a market seeks to open facilities on a subset of candidate locations so as to maximize its expected market share, assuming that customers choose the available alternative that maximizes a random utility function. We introduce a deterministic equivalent reformulation of this stochastic problem as a maximum covering location problem with an exponential number of demand points, each of which is covered by a different set of candidate locations. Estimating the prevalence of these preference profiles through simulation generalizes a sample average approximation method from the literature and results in a maximum covering location problem of manageable size. To solve it, we develop a partial Benders reformulation in which the contribution to the objective of the least influential preference profiles is aggregated and bounded by submodular cuts. This set of profiles is selected by a knee detection method that seeks to identify the best tradeoff between the fraction of the demand that is retained in the master problem and the size of the model. We develop a theoretical analysis of our approach and show that the solution quality it provides for the original stochastic problem, its computational performance, and the automatic profile-retention strategy it exploits are directly connected to the entropy of the preference profiles in the population. Computational experiments on existing and new benchmark sets indicate that our approach dominates the classical sample average approximation method on large instances of the competitive facility location problem, can outperform the best heuristic method from the literature under the multinomial logit model, and achieves state-of-the-art results under the mixed multinomial logit model. We characterize a broader class of problems, which includes assortment optimization, to which the solving methodology and the analyses developed in this paper can be extended. History: Accepted by Andrea Lodi, Area Editor for Design &amp; Analysis of Algorithms—Discrete. Funding: This research was supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Nature et Technologies and Institut de Valorisation des Données through scholarships to R. Legault. E. Frejinger was partially supported by the Canada Research Chair program [Grant 950-232244]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2023.0280 .

A characterization of stable mechanisms that minimize manipulation

Stability and reducing opportunities for strategic behavior are common goals in matching markets. In scenarios where agents can report a restricted number of potential partners as acceptable, we characterize the family of stable mechanisms that minimize the number of manipulative agents in each preference profile.

Value preference profiles and ethical compliance quantification: a new approach for ethics by design in technology-assisted dementia care

AbstractMonitoring and assistive technologies (MATs) are being used more frequently in healthcare. A central ethical concern is the compatibility of these systems with the moral preferences of their users—an issue especially relevant to participatory approaches within the ethics-by-design debate. However, users’ incapacity to communicate preferences or to participate in design processes, e.g., due to dementia, presents a hurdle for participatory ethics-by-design approaches. In this paper, we explore the question of how the value preferences of users in the field of dementia care can be integrated into AI-based MATs. First, we briefly introduce different ethics-by-design approaches and explain the challenges they face in dementia care. Next, we introduce a novel approach for addressing these challenges. Through a qualitative content analysis of interviews with persons with dementia and their family caregivers (n = 27), we identified multiple ideal–typical value preference profiles. We then applied these profiles in a computer simulation, by which we also introduce the concept of ethical compliance quantification to scale the moral preferences of the interviewees for the simulation. Finally, we discuss study results, the advantages of using computer simulations, and general study limitations before drawing conclusions for further research. The study contributes to the ongoing debate on participatory ethics-by-design by defining on the basis of empirical data ideal–typical value preference frameworks that can be used to guide MAT actions and their outcomes. Going forward, MAT end-users with dementia and other communication-impaired persons could be enabled to choose a value profile that best fits their moral preferences.

The Borda and Condorcet winners coincide for lexicographic preferences

We show that, for any lexicographic preference profile, the sets of Borda and Condorcet winners coincide. Moreover, the sets of Borda and Condorcet losers also coincide. However the binary relations induced by the Borda Count and the majority pairwise comparisons are not the same.

Maximal Condorcet domains. A further progress report

Condorcet domains are sets of preference orders such that the majority relation corresponding to any profile of preferences from the domain is acyclic. The best known examples in economics are the single-peaked, the single-crossing, and the group separable domains. We survey the latest developments in the area since Monjardet's magisterial overview (2009), provide some new results and offer two conjectures concerning unsolved problems. The main goal of the presentation is to illuminate the rich internal structure of the class of maximal Condorcet domains. In an appendix, we present the complete classification of all maximal Condorcet domains on four alternatives obtained by Dittrich (2018).

A data-driven agent-based model of occupants’ thermal comfort behaviors for the planning of district-scale flexible work arrangements

In a global context of increasing flexibility in the way workplaces and the districts in which they are located are used, there is a need for occupant-driven approaches to plan urban energy systems. Several authors have suggested the use of agent-based models (ABM) of building occupants in urban building energy simulations due to their ability to reproduce emergent behaviors from individual agents’ actions. However, few works in the literature take full advantage of the ABM paradigm, accounting for both occupant presence and energy-relevant behaviors at the district scale. In this work, we propose a methodology to develop a data-driven, agent-based model of building occupants’ activities and thermal comfort in an urban district. Our methodology combines the use of campus-scale Wi-Fi data to derive feasible occupant activity and location plans, along with thermal preference profiles derived from a longitudinal field study where off-the-shelf, non-intrusive sensors were used to capture the right-here-right-now thermal preference of 35 participants in the same case study district. Our model is then used to explore how different district operation strategies could affect building energy performance in the context of increased workspace flexibility. Our results show that by providing a diversity of building operation conditions, with different buildings having different set point temperatures, occupants’ thermal comfort hours could be improved by an average of about 10% with little effect on district energy performance. Meanwhile, a 6%–15% average decrease in space cooling energy use intensity was observed when implementing occupant-driven ventilation and setpoint controls, regardless of location choice scenario.

Implementing direct democracy via representation

Today, several social movements in western democracies argue that traditional representative democracy has failed to adequately represent the will of the “people”, and instead support direct democracy as the only political system to restore the will of the majority. We analyze under what conditions the policy – a vector of decisions on every issue – implemented by the winner of a bipartisan electoral competition coincides with the policy that citizens would choose by means of direct democracy. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for this equivalence to hold, implying that, as long as at least one of them is not fulfilled, a divergence of outcomes between direct and representative democracy arises. The first condition requires that the outcome of majority voting issue-by-issue is the Condorcet winner relative to the voters’ preference profile over the set of policies. The second requires that either that outcome is the preferred policy for at least one of the candidates, or that candidates’ preferred policies differ on every single issue. We reinterpret some findings in the literature in the light of our model and present them as potential reasons why the equivalence between direct and representative democracy may fail.

Condorcet-loser dominance between the plurality rule and other scoring rules

In a voting model with three alternatives, we show that for any non-Borda scoring rule, there exists at least one preference profile under which the scoring rule selects a Condorcet loser, whereas the plurality rule does not.

Towards a typology of European migration attitudes across time and space: a person-centred approach

ABSTRACT Citizens’ attitudes towards migration have received ample scholarly and public attention in recent years. While there is a growing consensus on what is driving such migration attitudes, we know little about the heterogeneity of these attitudes. Several scholars have used and operationalised terms such as ‘migration mood’, ‘policy preferences’, or ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’ interchangeably, while others have argued that citizens have distinct preferences, depending on the type of immigrant, and on what policies, or consequences of migration are studied. We shed new light on this debate, by suggesting a person-centred approach. We investigate if a typology of attitudes towards migrants and migration at the individual and country level is present, by applying multilevel latent class analysis to European Social Survey data (2002–2020). We uncover three distinct profiles of migration preferences at the individual level, and three specific country level clusters. Altogether, Europeans make a distinction between policy preferences, and their threat perceptions of out-groups, though most Europeans are either generally in favour or against immigration. Further, we demonstrate that there has been a shift in attitudinal profiles at the individual and at the country level: the group of Europeans that is generally positive about migration has grown in size.

Socio-demographic Profiles of Customers’ Food Preferences at Ecotourism Destinations in South Western, Nigeria

The travel and tourism industry in the twentieth century has changed its eating patterns and meal preferences. Food to an extent is a reflection of social status and individual identification, hence, an explicit way of understanding customer's food consumption behaviour is to study their food preference. The provision of meals is one of the key determinants of meeting customers' expectations and satisfaction at destinations, hence, this study assessed the Socio-demographic profiles of customers' food preferences at ecotourism destinations in South Western, Nigeria. An exploratory research approach was conducted through the use of structured questionnaires for data gathering. The data were collected from a purposely selected population comprising both customers and staff of Ikogosi Warm Spring and Olumo Rock Resorts. The data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The Chi-Square results on meal preferences concerning age shows a significant influence of age on soup and starchy morsel, Assorted rice dishes, Yam and potato dishes, Beans and Beans products and Non-Alcoholic beverages, a significant association and influence was shown among genders for beans and beans products, customers income and education has no influence on their preference for alcoholic beverages and a significant relationship between food choices of customers and marital status was noticeable. The research findings reveal that customers' food preferences are shaped by Socio-demographic influences. This study concluded that the dimensions of customers' food preferences are majorly tilted towards Socio-demographic variables of age, gender, marital status, income and educational qualifications. It is recommended that customers' Socio-demographic characteristics should be a key indicator in food and beverage planning, preparation and marketing at ecotourism destinations.

Implementation in undominated strategies with applications to auction design, public good provision and matching

This paper considers implementation in undominated strategies by finite mechanisms, where multiple outcomes may be implemented at a single state of the world. We establish a sufficient condition for implementation applicable in a general environment with private values. We apply it to three well-known environments and obtain strikingly permissive results. In the single-object auction, the second-price auction with a reserve price can be outperformed in terms of revenue. In the public good provision problem, the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism can be outperformed from the viewpoint of a designer who wishes to minimise deficit subject to efficiency. In the two-sided matching environment where preferences on one side of the market are private information, the social choice correspondence that outputs all stable matchings at every preference profile, is implementable.