Tactics and concessions for argumentation-based negotiation

Abstract

Argumentation-based negotiation has gained increasing prominence in the multi-agent field over the last years. There is currently a long literature on the use of argumentation in negotiation and especially the modeling of negotiation protocols or decision making mechanisms. However the study of strategic issues that define the behavior of an agent during the negotiation has been largely neglected. This work fills this gap by providing, profile, behavior and time constraints based tactics that can be combined together to implement complex strategies similar to those studied in game-theoretic negotiation. These different tactics lead to different types of concessions. An experimental evaluation shows how tactics and concessions may influence the negotiation length and outcome, under the assumptions of deadlines and the availability of information on the opponent. © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.