Decentralized Value Systems Agreements
For societies or groups needing to reconcile diverse value systems, this method offers a more realistic and flexible alternative to single-agreement approaches, improving individual satisfaction.
This work addresses the challenge of aggregating subjective value systems by proposing a decentralized optimization method that generates multiple distinct value agreements, accommodating individual differences. Applied to real-world data from a Participatory Value Evaluation and a European Value Survey, the method achieved substantial improvements in individual utilities over existing aggregation techniques.
One of the biggest challenges of value-based decision-making is dealing with the subjective nature of values. The relative importance of a value for a particular decision varies between individuals, and people may also have different interpretations of what aligning with a value means in a given situation. While members of a society are likely to share a set of principles or values, their value systems--that is, how they interpret these values and the relative importance they give to them--have been found to differ significantly. This work proposes a novel method for aggregating value systems, generating distinct value agreements that accommodate the inherent differences within these systems. Unlike existing work, which focuses on finding a single value agreement, the proposed approach may be more suitable for a realistic and heterogeneous society. In our solution, the agents indicate their value systems and the extent to which they are willing to concede. Then, a set of agreements is found, taking a decentralized optimization approach. Our work has been applied to identify value agreements in two real-world scenarios using data from a Participatory Value Evaluation process and a European Value Survey. These case studies illustrate the different aggregations that can be obtained with our method and compare them with those obtained using existing value system aggregation techniques. In both cases, the results showed a substantial improvement in individual utilities compared to existing alternatives.