Traditionally, preferences have been considered stable although there are growing evidences that such stability is a mere theoretical assumption. Attending to this fact, it should be interesting to measure how much stability preferences provide in order to improve decision making processes. Surprisingly, no research has been found on measuring preferences stability. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes a novel approach for measuring the stability of preferences and also for improving understanding of current and future decisions. In order to be faithful to reality, this research considers decisions like complete pre-orders on a set of alternatives. Following this reasoning, this paper provides the general concept of decision stability measure as well as two specific measures: the local and the global decision stability measure. Moreover, the main features of the novel approach are examined, including several mathematical results on the behaviour of the proposed measure. And eventually, this contribution develops two real cases of study, with in-depth analysis of preferences behaviour and their stability over time. Specifically, the first one explores into the characteristics of Spanish citizens' voting behaviour and the second one attempts to analyse European citizens' preferences about passenger car market.

Preferences stability: A measure of preferences changes over time

A non-traditional approach on the measurement of agents behaviour is presented. This contribution focus on measuring stability of agents’ preferences on an intertemporal context under the assumption of considering uncertainty opinions. To this aim, the concept of behaviour stability measure is defined as well as a particular one, the sequential behaviour stability measure. Finally and in order to highlight the good behaviour of novel measure, some properties are also provided.

A proposal to measure human group behaviour stability

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/8/4/467/pdf

Public Healthcare: Citizen’s Preferences in Spain

The replacement of people by Automatic Decision-making Systems (ADS) has become a threat today. However, it seems that this replacement is unstoppable. Thus, the need for future and current ADS to perform their tasks as perfectly as possible is, more than a necessity an obligation. Hence, the design of these ADS must be carried out in accordance with the theoretical models on which they are to be built. From this point of view, this paper considers the classic definition of General Decision Making Problem and introduces two new key elements for building ADS: the nature of the information available and the context in which the problem is being solved. The new definition allows to cover different models and decision and optimization problems, some of which are presented for illustrative purposes.

Fuzzy Information and Contexts for Designing Automatic Decision-Making Systems

R. de Andrés Calle BORDA Research Unit, PRESAD Research Group and Multidisciplinary Institute of Enterprise University of Salamanca, E37007 Salamanca, Spain rocioac@usal.es J.M. Cascón Department of Economics and Economic History Institute on Fundamental Physics and Mathematics University of Salamanca, E37007 Salamanca, Spain casbar@usal.es T. González-Arteaga BORDA and PRESAD Research Groups Multidisciplinary Institute of Enterprise University of Valladolid, E47011 Valladolid, Spain teresa.gonzalez.arteaga@uva.es

Estabilidad de las decisiones en el tiempo: ¿Cómo medirla?

This work introduces a non-traditional perspective about the problem of measuring the stability of agents’ preferences. Specifically, the cohesiveness of preferences at different moments of time is explored under the assumption of considering dichotomous evaluations. The general concept of time cohesiveness measure is introduced as well as a particular formulation based on the consideration of any two successive moments of time, the sequential time cohesiveness measure. Moreover, some properties of the novel measure are also provided. Finally, and in order to emphasize the adaptability of our proposal to real situations, a factual case of study about clinical decision-making is presented. Concretely, the study of preference stability for life-sustaining treatments of patients with advanced cancer at end of life is analysed. The research considers patients who express their opinions on three life-sustaining treatments at four consecutive periods of time. The novel measure provides information of patients preference stability along time and considers the possibility of cancer metastases.

/pdf/preference-stability-along-time-the-time-cohesiveness-5g8cr6eekr.pdf

M. Peral

Papers

Preference stability along time: the time cohesiveness measure