One of the core complexities involved in evaluating decision alternatives in the area of public decision-making is to deal with conflicts. The stakeholders affected by and involved in the decision often have conflicting preferences regarding the actions under consideration. For an executive authority, these differences of opinion can be problematic, during both implementation and communication, even though the decision is rational with respect to an attribute set perceived to represent social welfare. It is therefore important to involve the stakeholders in the process and to get an understanding of their preferences. Otherwise, the stakeholder disagreement can lead to costly conflicts. One way of approaching this problem is to provide means for comprehensive, yet effective stakeholder preference elicitation methods, where the stakeholders can state their preferences with respect to actions part of the current agenda of a government. In this paper we contribute two supporting methods: (i) an application of the cardinal ranking (CAR) method for preference elicitation for conflict evaluations and (ii) two conflict indices for measuring stakeholder conflicts. The application of the CAR method utilizes a do nothing alternative to differentiate between positive and negative actions. The elicited preferences can then be used as input to the two conflict indices indicating the level of conflict within a stakeholder group or between two stakeholder groups. The contributed methods are demonstrated in a real-life example carried out in the municipality of Upplands Väsby, Sweden. We show how a questionnaire can be used to elicit preferences with CAR and how the indices can be used to semantically describe the level of consensus and conflict regarding a certain attribute. As such, we show how the methods can provide decision aid in the clarification of controversies.
This paper reports upon the deliverables and learnings from a project within decision analysis for participatory planning and policy analysis on the municipal level. The project aimed to develop and utilize an online multicriteria decision analysis tool for evaluations of policy alternatives with respect to municipal commercial development policies, acknowledging the objectives and preferences from various local and national stakeholders. The tool itself relied solely on that the users supplied cardinal ranking statements in the appraisal of alternatives and in the ranking of criteria and the surrounding method has been used in three cases. In each case, several significant insights obtained in the decision‐modelling workshops were emphasized by the participants. The better understanding of the general decision situation, preference structures, and possible strategies was highly appreciated. The perception was also that this enabled a better understanding of conflicting issues, even when these were not entirely resolved.
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