Building Negotiation Decision Support Systems by Integrating Game Theory and Heuristics

Negotiation is considered in general very context sensitive. Since our research laboratory has successfully developed decision support systems in Australian Family Law, we have used our domain expertise to construct a variety of Family Law negotiation support systems. Family_Winner uses point allocation and heuristics to advise upon structuring the mediation process and provides solutions based on trade-off and compensation strategies. Heuristic utility functions were developed from cases supplied to us by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Family_Winner operates best when it is possible to allocate points to issues, and creative decision-making is not required. Whilst conducting an evaluation of the Family_Winner system, we observed that Family_Winner, in focusing upon providing advice with regard to bargaining, had neglected considering issues of justice. In a domain such as Family Law, issues of justice are of paramount concern. This indicates that use of negotiation support systems should be limited to domains in which principles of equity do not conflict with user satisfaction. When Family_Winner was used in a variety of other negotiation domains (international disputes, enterprise bargaining and company mergers) the advice offered strongly resembled the eventual negotiated outcome.