Eliciting agents’ behaviour using scenario-based questionnaire in agent-based dairy supply chain simulation

ABSTRACT

A scenario-based questionnaire is a survey method that aims to identify the respondents’ decision rules using their responses to a series of scenarios. It is rarely used in agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) with most researchers preferring a survey with closed questions as the data collection method. This is particularly true for ABMS studies in agri-food supply chains. In our paper, we design a scenario-based questionnaire to elicit the behaviour of agents in ABMS and apply it in a dairy supply chain case. Our findings suggest that respondents respond well to a scenario-based questionnaire as it relates more closely to their actual decision-making process. Furthermore, our experiment shows that the decision rules extracted using a scenario-based questionnaire improve ABMS validity.

KEYWORDS:

• Agent-based modelling and simulation
• data-collection
• decision rule elicitation
• supply chain
• dairy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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