Assessment of an application for wind power establishment is a multi-criteria problem including the coreproblem: whether to grant permission or not. In Sweden, County Administrative Boards decide the outcomes of these kinds of applications. Five permit officers were interviewed to investigate the difficultiesand the type of value aggregation in this work, and to test reasoning models as possible decision supporttools. The commonly used type of aggregation was condition-based aggregation. Aggregation based onvalue differences, which means weighing together aspects for and against the wind power establishment,was considered difficult to apply by the respondents. Most of them agreed that some of the aspects thatspeak against granting permission could be aggregated but that aggregation of all aspects would be harddue to differences between aspects. In addition, the value of the main aspect that speaks for permission,climate friendly energy supply, is very difficult to estimate. Thus, aggregation based on value differencesis a difficult question and how it could be performed is discussed in the paper. If policymakers wish tomake it possible to take both positive and negative aspects into consideration and to discuss thetrade-offs transparently, the investigated method can be a way forward.

The concept of importance of criteria is used as a central element in several decision making contexts, specifically in value aggregation, e.g. as an input to decision support tools. For example, in the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) decision makers are asked to estimate how much more important one criterion is than another. However, it is not clear how people understand aggregation models based on importance of criteria in decision making situations. The purpose of this descriptive study is to investigate if people find an aggregation model in simple value aggregation tasks which remind of the way AHP elicits the input. Further, the purpose is to investigate if people's tendency to find a model depends on their cognitive abilities. In an exploratory laboratory experiment, participants assessed which of two alternatives is the best, based on information about the importance of two criteria and how good the two alternatives are compared to each other with respect to these criteria. The results confirm that people are willing to use importance of criteria and goodness of alternatives as input in value aggregations and show three main models for aggregation. More participants with higher numeracy applied a clear model compared to those with lower numeracy. None of the identified models was one of AHP's models but one of them reminded of one of the ways input can be aggregated in the AHP. The three models identified in the experiment are based on lexicographic order, multiplication and a combination of multiplication and addition. How the results could be used in a prescriptive context is discussed in the paper.

Universities play an important role in the development of society. However, it is not always clear what the objectives of collaboration between a Higher Education Institution (HEI) and external stakeholders from the surrounding society are. In this study, value-focused thinking was applied to construct structures of strategic, fundamental and means objectives of different stakeholders working practically with collaboration between an HEI and the surrounding society. Respondents in three groups of stakeholders from a university and external parties were interviewed. Focus in this study is on general objectives of collaboration between an HEI and the surrounding society. Based on the interviews and feedback, objectives were identified and SSFMO (Structure of Strategic, Fundamental and Means Objectives) was constructed from each respondent’s answer. Generally, the fundamental objectives differed more between the stakeholders than the means objectives did. How SSFMOs could be used in practical collaboration projects is discussed in the paper.

The way by which various sources of external information interact in their effects on judgment is rarely investigated. Here, we report two experiments that examine how two sources of external information—an anchor (a reference price) and an eco-label—influence judgments of an objective fact (product price) and a subjective preference (willingness-to-pay for the product). Participants’ price judgments were drawn in the direction of the anchor point, whereas the eco-label resulted in higher judgments of objective fact (Experiment 1) but did not influence subjective preference (Experiment 2). Interestingly, the eco-label seemed to strengthen the effect of the high anchor in judgments of objective fact. Further, participants with higher environmental concern answered a higher price on the subjective preference questions when they received a high anchor, as well as a lower price when they received a low anchor in comparison to the low environmental concern group. This study demonstrates that various external information sources can strengthen each other’s effects on consumer belief about products, while the effects are weaker for consumers’ preferences. The implications of the results for decision making are discussed.

In the present study, we explore potential effects of visual saliency on decision quality in context of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). We compare two visualization techniques: parallel coordinates (PC) and scatterplot matrices (SPM). We investigate the impact of saliency facilitated by means of either color or size. The saliency and visualization techniques were factors in our analysis, and effects were evaluated in terms of decision quality, attention, time on task, and confidence. Results show that the quality of choice and attention were comparable for all saliency conditions when SPM was used. For PC, we found a positive effect of color saliency both on the quality of choice and on attention. Different forms of saliency led to varying times on task in both PC and SPM; however, those variations were not significant. A comparison of PC and SPM shows, users spent less time on the task, obtained better decision quality, and were more confident with their decision when using PC. To summarize, our findings suggest that saliency can increase attention and decision quality in MCDM for certain visualization techniques and forms of saliency. Another contribution of this work is the novel suggestion of the method to elicit of users’ preferences; its potential benefits are discussed in the end of the paper.

Decision-making methods used in geospatial decision-making are often computationally complex prescriptive methods, details of which are rarely transparent to the decision maker. However, having a deep understanding of the details and mechanisms of the applied method is a prerequisite for the efficient use thereof. In this paper, we present a novel decision-making framework that emanates from the need for intuitive and easy-to-use decision support systems for geospatial multi-criteria decision-making. The framework consists of two parts: the decision making model, and the interactive visualization framework. The decision-making model is based on the concept of quasi-satisficing, and as such, it is intuitive and easy to understand and apply. It integrates even swaps, a prescriptive decision-making method, with the findings of behavioural decision-making theories. Providing visual feedback and interaction opportunities throughout the decision-making process, the interactive visualization part of the framework helps the decision maker gain better insight into the decision space and attribute dependencies. Furthermore, it provides the means to analyse and compare the outcomes of different scenarios and decision paths.

If human behavior is to become more sustainable, people will have to be willing to sacrifice personal gains and benefits for the sake of sustainability. Decisions will have to involve making tradeoffs between what is good for the self and what is good for sustainability. In the present paper, we studied the psychology of such tradeoffs in the context of a carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission versus travel time tradeoff task. The experiment investigated how intrinsic motivational factors (environmental concern), extrinsic motivational information (a normative message) and extrinsic motivation-neutral information (anchors) influence these tradeoffs. The results revealed that extrinsic factors interact in their effects on tradeoffs such that participants were willing to travel for a longer time for the benefit of less CO₂ emissions when they were externally motivated by a normative message, but only when this motivational emphasis was combined with a high anchor. Furthermore, this interaction was particularly strong in participants with high environmental concern. We conclude that extrinsic and intrinsic motivational factors interact in their effect on making people willing to accept personal losses in exchange for sustainability gains and that these motivational factors may have to be combined with further extrinsic information to influence decisions.

One of the today’s greatest challenges is to adjust our behavior so that we can avoid a major climate disaster. To do so, we must make sacrifices for the sake of the environment. The study reported here investigates how anchors (extrinsic motivational-free information) and normative messages (extrinsic motivational information) influence people’s tradeoffs between travel time and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the context of car travel and whether any interactions with environmental concern (an intrinsic motivational factor) can be observed. In this study, people received either a CO2, health or no normative message together with either a high anchor, a low anchor, or no anchor. People that received both a high anchor and a CO2 emission normative message were willing to travel for a longer time than those that only received a high anchor. If a low anchor was presented, no differences in willingness to travel for a longer time were found between the three different conditions of normative message groups, i.e., CO2 normative message, health normative message, or no normative message. People with higher concern for the environment were found to be willing to travel for a longer time than those with lower concern for the environment. Further, this effect was strongest when a high anchor was presented. These results suggest that anchors and normative messages are among the many factors that can influence people’s tradeoffs between CO2 emission and travel time, and that various factors may have to be combined to increase their influence over pro-environmental behavior and decisions.

In a previous work we developed GISwaps, a novel method for geospatial decision-making based on Even Swaps. In this paper, we present the results of an evaluation of a visualization framework integrated with this method, implemented within a decision support system. This evaluation is based on two different studies. In the quantitative study, 15 student participants used GISwaps with no visual features, and 15 participants used GISwaps with the integrated visual framework, as the tool in a solar farm site location case study. The results of the quantitative evaluation show positive impact of the visualization in terms of increased coherency in trade-offs. The results also show a statistically significant difference in average trade-off values between the groups, with users from the non-visual group setting on average 20% higher trade-off values compared with the users in the visual group. In the qualitative study, we had one expert in GIS, two experts in decision-making and two experts in solar energy as a focus user group. Data in this study were obtained by observations and semi-structured interviews with the participants. The impact of the visualization framework was assessed positively by all participants in the expert group. 

This article describes how continuous GIS-MCDM problems are commonly managed by combining some weighting method based on pairwise comparisons of criteria with an aggregation method. The reliability of this approach may be questioned, though. First, assigning weights to criteria, without taking into consideration the actual consequences or values of the alternatives, is in itself controversial. Second, the value functions obtained by this approach are in most cases linear, which is seldom the case in reality. The authors present a new method for GIS-MCDM in continuous choice models based on Even Swaps. The method is intuitive and easy to use, based on value trade-offs, and thus not relying on criteria weighting. Value functions obtained when using the method may be linear or non-linear, and thereby are more sensitive to the characteristics of the decision space. The performed case study showed promising results regarding the reliability of the method in GIS-MCDM context.