• Special Issue: Advances in Behavioural Research on Supported Decision Processes

Special Issue: Advances in Behavioural Research on Supported Decision Processes

Guest Editors: Gilberto Montibeller, Jyrki Wallenius

 

• Deadline for submission: February 28, 2016

Motivation

Behavioural decision research has its roots in the writings of Ward Edwards and Herbert Simon in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Other early contributors are Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky who made breakthroughs on behavioural decision heuristics and biases in the 1970’s and 1980’s. These scholars called for behavioural realism in decision support tools. Still, it is only recently that the importance of behavioural decision research has received significant attention in the Operational Research (OR) community, as evidenced, for instance, by the creation of the EURO Working Group on Behavioural OR, led by Alberto Franco and Raimo Hämäläinen.

The early research on behavioural decision theory emphasized the descriptive aspects of decision-making and unsupported decision processes. The pragmatic OR approach, in contrast, is focused on models and tools for supporting decision processes. This approach will be more successful when it builds on a better understanding of how supported decisions are made and how behavioural issues impact the development and use of tools for decision support.

This Special Issue presents major advances in behavioural decision research in relation to OR methods and tools. For instance, the elicitation of preferences and judgements involves behavioural biases; choices in optimization modelling depend on the analyst’s judgements; facilitated decision modeling is influenced by group behaviour but also affects group dynamics; and decision support systems are guided by the users’ behaviour. While there is an extensive psychological literature on behavioural issues in unsupported decision making, these issues are understudied in the context of supported decision making.

Contents

We invite submissions which focus on behavioural decision research in the context of supported decision processes. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions. Topics of particular interest may include, but are not limited to:

• state-of-the-art reviews of methods and applications;
• analysis of how risk and uncertainties are handled or managed in decision making;
• theoretical underpinnings of risk and methodological advances in risk analysis for decision making;
• What behavioural assumptions are reasonable in developing and using prescriptive decision tools?
• Which methods of quantifying uncertainties and preferences are normatively sound?
• How can debiasing tools reduce behavioural biases in eliciting judgments?
• How do group dynamics and behavioural biases affect facilitated group decision making?
• How can behavioural biases in the use of decision support systems be mitigated?

Schedule

Prospective authors are invited to submit a full paper to the Manuscript Central editorial system (https://www.editorialmanager.com/ejdp, article type SI: Advances in Behavioral Research on Supported Decision Processes). Alternatively, they may send the Guest Editors a three-page extended abstract describing the proposed contribution (email [email protected]) for feedback (prior to sending the full paper). The planned schedule is as follows:

October 31, 2015	Extended abstracts
End of February, 2016	Deadline for the submission of full papers
3rd quarter, 2016	Final decision notification
End of 2016	Publication of the Special Issue

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