Automated formal analysis of human multi-issue negotiation processes

Abstract

This paper reports on experiments in (human) multi-issue negotiation and their analysis, and presents a generic software environment supporting such an analysis. First, the paper presents a System for Analysis of Multi-Issue Negotiation (SAMIN). SAMIN was designed to analyse multi-issue negotiation processes between human negotiators, between human and software agents, and between software agents. The agents conduct one-to-one negotiations, in which the values across multiple issues are negotiated on simultaneously. To analyse such negotiation processes, the user can enter any formal property deemed useful into the system and use the system to automatically check this property in given negotiation traces. The paper presents the results of applying SAMIN in the analysis of empirical traces obtained from an experiment in multi-issue negotiation about second hand cars. In the experiment the efforts of 74 humans negotiating against each other have been analysed using SAMIN.