How well does the OWA operator represent real preferences?

Olivier Reimann, Christian Schumacher and Rudolf Vetschera

European Journal of Operational Research, 2017, vol. 258, issue 3, 993-1003

Abstract: We present the results of an empirical study, in which we analyze the ability of the Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) operator to model actual preferences in a multi-attribute ranking task. We compare the OWA to a competing model (Simple Additive Weighting SAW), and we also study whether its characteristic feature, the ability to represent different attitudes toward compensation among attributes, is reflected in the preferences provided by subjects. We find that in general, the OWA model fits slightly less well to empirical data. Subjects whose preferences are better explained by the SAW model are also more consistent in their choice behavior. Our results furthermore indicate that preferences of most subjects are not fully compensatory. Thus the ability of the OWA operator to represent different attitudes toward compensation can be a useful feature in modeling actual preferences. The structure of the weights estimated for the OWA operator also suggests that it might provide a good approximation to certain types of decision heuristics.

Keywords: Multiple criteria analysis; Behavioral OR; OWA operator; Empirical study; Consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221716307895
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:258:y:2017:i:3:p:993-1003

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.09.037

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().