Fuzzy constraints are a popular approach to handle preferences and over-constrained problems in scenarios where one needs to be cautious, such as in medical or space applications. We consider here fuzzy constraint problems where some of the preferences may be missing. This models, for example, settings where agents are distributed and have privacy issues, or where there is an ongoing preference...

One of the most challenging goals of recommender systems is to infer the preferences of users through the observation of their actions. Those preferences are essential to obtain a satisfactory accuracy in the recommendations. Preference learning is especially difficult when attributes of different kinds (numeric or linguistic) intervene in the problem, and even more when they take multiple poss...

The assumption of the stability of preferences is a fundamental one in the theory of the consumer. Many papers within the stated preferences literature have tested this assumption, and have found mixed results. Individuals may become more sure of their preferences as they repeat a valuation task or purchase decision; they may also learn more about prices and quantities of substitutes or complem...

A growing body of literature demonstrates that many behavioral anomalies observed in stated-preference elicitation methods such as the contingent valuation method are also observed in actual choices and vice versa. This presentation furthers the argument that such parallel behaviors should be viewed as a strength of stated-preference methods. Three well-known anomalies observed in both stated p...

We consider soft constraint problems where some of the preferences may be unspecified. This models, for example, settings where agents are distributed and have privacy issues, or where there is an ongoing preference elicitation process. In this context, we study how to find an optimal solution without having to wait for all the preferences. In particular, we define algorithms, that interleave s...

The field of social psychology explores how a person behaves within the context of other people. The social context can play a substantive role in non-market allocation decisions given peoples choices and values extend beyond the classic market-based exchange institution. Herein we explore how social psychology has affected one aspect of environmental economics: preference elicitation through s...

In this paper, we present an overview of our work towards utilization of multimodal implicit feedback in recommender systems for small e-commerce enterprises. We focus on deeper understanding of implicit user feedback as a rich source of heterogeneous information. We present a model of implicit feedback for e-commerce, discuss important contextual features affecting its values and describe ways...

Current proposals for preference-based information access seem to ignore that users should be acquainted with the information space and the available choices for describing effectively their preferences. Furthermore users rarely formulate complex (preference or plain) queries. The interaction paradigm of Faceted Dynamic Taxonomies (FDT) allows users to explore an information space and to restri...

Motivated by the fast growing practice of web analytics, we study whether strategic customers are willing to click. Clicking reveals advance demand information which the firm can use to reduce demand-supply mismatch cost thereby increasing product availability to customers. Using newsvendor models that incorporate customers who anticipate that their clicks are tracked, we demonstrate how the ma...

A number of recent papers in environmental economics have focused on the process of researching preferences – agents are uncertain about preferences but at a cost may narrow their uncertainty. This issue has arisen in formulating bids in contingent valuation as well as the debate over the divergence between WTP and WTA. In the context of contingent valuation, it has been hypothesized that the h...