Negotiation Support for Multi-Party Resource Allocation: Developing Recommendation for Decreasing Transportation-Related Air Pollution in Budapest

Thomas A. Darling, Jeryl L. Mumpower, John Rohrbaugh and Anna Vari
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Thomas A. Darling: Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts, University of Baltimore
Jeryl L. Mumpower: State University of New York at Albany
John Rohrbaugh: State University of New York at Albany
Anna Vari: Institute for Social Conflict Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Group Decision and Negotiation, 1999, vol. 8, issue 1, No 4, 75 pages

Abstract: Abstract Decisions about how to allocate scarce resources among potential programs are common sources of conflict in both public and private life. This paper describes a case in which negotiation support was provided for a five-member task force trying to reach agreement about how to allocate limited resources among programs designed to improve the air quality in Budapest, Hungary. The intervention consisted of a series of facilitated decision conferences, plus individual interviews. The task force eventually reached agreement about a recommended package of 15 air quality management programs costing 1,500 million Hungarian forints. The research makes four significant contributions. First, it demonstrated that resource allocation models provide a useful framework for understanding and facilitating multi-party negotiation processes. Second, because resource allocation models were elicited individually for each group member before building a single group model, it was possible to analyze the five-dimensional feasible settlement space (i.e., the joint distribution of benefits for each task member for all possible resource allocation packages). Third, several innovative applications of analytical techniques (i.e., Pareto-efficiency analyses, numerical and graphical analyses of feasible settlement spaces and efficient frontiers, and analyses of task force members' investment progressions) served to improve understanding of disagreements within the group and to evaluate the quality of potential resource allocation packages. Fourth, changes in individual preferences and group agreement were assessed over time. Group members appeared to change substantially and their level of agreement to increase markedly over time.

Keywords: negotiation; negotiation support; decision conferences; resource allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1023/A:1008634121147

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