A bilateral deliberation mechanism for conflict resolving with multi-actor and multi-criteria

Multi-actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) is widely used to support group decision-making processes that involve various stakeholders. These stakeholders usually have divergent attributes and heterogeneous preferences, which leads to conflicting views on certain pre-set criteria. To deal with this issue, we propose a four-step conflict resolution approach to diagnose and mitigate such conflicts. This approach integrates a correlation-based technique with a search function to identify the criteria that cause the conflict between stakeholders and measure to what extent each criterion contributes to such a conflict. On this basis, we design a bilateral deliberation mechanism to resolve group conflict by resolving conflict between pairs of stakeholders. The experimental results indicate that, from the perspectives of effectiveness and fairness, the bilateral deliberation mechanism outperforms the traditional conflict mitigation approach that requires all stakeholders to participate in a conversation together. Moreover, the bilateral deliberation mechanism is adequate for important decision-making events where any concessions made will be very costly for participants.