On the Determination of Aspiration Utility in Negotiation

Diverse types of negotiation support systems have been developed to fulfill the requirements during the pre-negotiation, negotiation, and post-settlement phases. However, to the researcher’s knowledge, there is no system that can provide an accurate suggestion for the negotiator to help determine aspiration utility. In this paper, an analytical approach based on the additive scoring model is proposed to provide the support for aspiration utility determination. In particular, no prior knowledge or assumption about the preferences of the opponent is needed. At present, the solution with equality and Pareto-optimality is chosen as the reference point for the aspiration utility. To understand the optimality and fairness of negotiation problems, a series of exhaustive simulations were performed on two-party, multi-issue negotiations. From the analysis results, it was found that it is possible to determine the range of the aspiration utility without knowing the preferences of either side of the negotiation. Furthermore, if the preferences of one side had been identified in the pre-negotiation stage, the results can be further restricted in a narrow range.