Representing and Reasoning with Multi-Stakeholder Qualitative Preference Queries

Abstract

Many decision-making scenarios, e.g., public policy, healthcare, business, and disaster response, require accommodating the preferences of multiple stakeholders. We offer the first formal treatment of reasoning with multi-stakeholder qualitative preferences in a setting where stakeholders express their preferences in a qualitative preference language, e.g., CP-net, CI-net, TCP-net, CP-Theory. We introduce a query language for expressing queries against such preferences over sets of outcomes that satisfy specified criteria, e.g., ψ1PAψ2 (read loosely as the set of outcomes satisfying ψ1 that are preferred over outcomes satisfying ψ2 by a set of stakeholders A). Motivated by practical application scenarios, we introduce and analyze several alternative semantics for such queries, and examine their interrelationships. We provide a provably correct algorithm for answering multi-stakeholder qualitative preference queries using model checking in alternation-free μ-calculus. We present experimental results that demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.