Trust Solutions Research Articles

Explaining Preference-Driven Schedules: The EXPRES Framework

Scheduling is the task of assigning a set of scarce resources distributed over time to a set of agents, who typically have preferences over the assignments they would like to get. Due to the constrained nature of these problems, satisfying all agents' preferences often turns infeasible, which might lead to some agents not being happy with the resulting schedule. Providing explanations has been shown to increase satisfaction and trust in solutions produced by AI tools. However, explaining schedules poses some particular challenges such as problem interpretability (i.e., generating explanations from a huge and dense amount of information) and privacy preservation (i.e., generating explanations respecting the privacy of other agents involved). In this paper we introduce the EXPRES framework, that can explain why a given preference was unsatisfied in a given optimal schedule. The EXPRES framework consists of (i) an explanation generator, that, based on a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model, finds the best set of reasons that can explain an unsatisfied preference; and (ii) an explanation parser, which translates the generated explanations into human interpretable ones, while preserving agents' privacy. Through simulations, we show that the explanation generator can efficiently scale to large instances. Finally, through a set of user studies within J.P. Morgan, we show that employees preferred the explanations generated by EXPRES over human-generated ones when considering workforce scheduling scenarios.

Purported green attitude vs. actual pro-environmental behaviour of Czech consumers

Green attitudes and consumer behaviour should correlate in order to achieve environmental objectives. Yet an attitude-behaviour gap exists, and there are many reasons why green attitudes are not proportionately translated into actual behaviour. This paper aims to describe the foundations of green attitudes of Czech consumers – their trust in solutions of companies, their belief in global warming and their willingness to join pro-environmental initiatives. Czech consumers were segmented by their gender, age and education. Based on a literature review and the results of this research, managerial implications were suggested in order to reduce this attitude-behaviour gap and help companies to communicate their green strategy more effectively. These fndings were framed by the previous research papers by the authors (Jaderná et al.) and should give an indication how to understand Czech consumers better.

Perception of Environmental Problem in Elementary Students’ Mind Maps

Abstract The purpose of this study is to define elementary students’ perception of environmental problems via mind mapping technique. For this purpose, 88 students of 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades at an elementary school in Ankara were asked to draw their own mind maps related to environmental problems. Mind maps drawn were qualitatively analyzed through document review. Results showed that elementary students were most concerned about environmental issues such as air pollution, water pollution, problem of waste, and global warming. Due to environmental problems, students mostly had feelings of grief, fear, and displeasure. The study showed that students’ level of trust in solutions to environmental problems was low.