Interactive Multi-Objective Programming: Its Aims, Applications and Demands

Abstract

The past decade has seen a considerable development of techniques designed to help decision makers faced with problems involving conflicting objectives. In particular, a family of methods known collectively as interactive multi-objective programming has come to the fore. This paper presents the underlying rationale of such methods, albeit as seen by a devil's advocate, briefly surveys some areas of application, but then questions the validity of these methods because their assumptions are not supported by the empirical results of behavioural decision theory.

Keywords:

• behavioural decision theory
• interactive multi-objective programming
• multi-criteria decision making
• preference structures
• value functions