A novel dynamic and social perspective of multiple criteria decision making

We discuss a Social Decision Making model describing real worlds scenarios in which a population of agents interacts in a network. Each agent takes its decisions considering a set of points of view in a multiple criteria decision making perspective. This model can represent situations of interest in different domains, such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Our model has two main features: dynamism and context-awareness. Dynamism refers to evolving preferences due to interactions between agents in the network. The context-awareness, instead, is the knowledge background that the agents take into account in doing their decisions. The evolution of a network will consequently depend on three factors: its initial configuration, the inclination of each agent to be influenced by the other agents in the network and the variability of the context-awareness. Depending on thesethree factors, the network could oscillate between several configurations or it can move to a fixed configuration that will not be modified anymore. In this new social perspective of multiple criteria decision making, the behaviour of each agent is represented by different parameters whose variation determines the evolution of the network. The proposed model could explain dynamic behaviours in several socio-economics contexts such as fashion economy and housing location.