Expert decision support systems: Effects on performance of participants in the live hog futures markets

Although expert systems technology that takes advantage of artificial intelligence techniques is very powerful, its application in the business domain is not without problems. Nevertheless, integration of Decision Support System (DSS) and Expert System (ES) will improve decision maker capabilities and create more powerful and useful computer-based systems. The quality and efficiency of both ES and DSS may be enhanced by integrating them.EDSS can be used to improve the decision making performance of hog producers. Price forecasts can be valuable to the decision makers involved in the hog market due to uncertainty in hog prices. Production, marketing and resource allocation decisions can be made more efficient by accurate forecasts. The large number of marketing alternatives available, the vast amount of information that must be considered, and integration of qualitative and quantitative information suggest that an expert decision support system is an appropriate tool for the marketing alternative selection problem.The purpose of this research is to investigate whether Expert Decision Support System (EDSS) technology, incorporating a theoretical forecast model, data base, expert knowledge, and user input could be used to enhance the decision performance of hog producers.The results provided evidence supporting the view that an expert decision support system improves the decision performance of hog producers. A second conclusion is that use of EDSS will encourage more hog producers to participate in hedging strategies to reduce price risks. Third, the subjects indicated the data and the knowledge of experts were valuable in their hog marketing decisions. Another conclusion is that perception measures do not necessarily reflect actual decision performance. Access to human experts, data and theoretical models are available to the hog producers but it involves time, cost, and interpretation problems. Hence, this research shows that EDSS can be a useful source for hog producers to improve their performance.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio