On a Persuasion Mechanism Among Agents for Group Choice Design Support Systems

In this paper, we propose a group decision support system based on persuasion among agents. In the system, each user manages a system for an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and an agent. Each user subjectively constructs a decision hierarchy and determines the various weights of alternatives by using AHP. Based on the hierarchy and weights, agents negotiate with each other on behalf of their users. In general, existing systems use a voting method for negotiating method among agents. But the result of voting are often inconsis-tent, largely due to the inconsistency of voting rules. Therefore, we propose a persuasion mechanism rather than voting methods for negotiation among agents. Adopting some of the features of AHP, we implement a new persuasion mechanism. The agents have an explanation mechanism. They can explain to their users why they have been persuaded, when they are persuaded, who persuaded them and how they are persuaded. Finally, we show the results of our current experiments. The results demonstrate that the persuasion mechanism is an eective method for a group decision support system based on multi-agent negotiation. Keywords:Multi-agent system, persuasion, group decision support system, and AHP.