Formulating generalised 'goal games' against nature: An illustration from decision-making under uncertainty in agriculture

Rehman, T. and Romero, C. (2006) Formulating generalised 'goal games' against nature: An illustration from decision-making under uncertainty in agriculture. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 175 (1). pp. 486-496. ISSN 0096-3003 doi: 10.1016/j.amc.2005.07.026

Abstract/Summary

The games-against-nature approach to the analysis of uncertainty in decision-making relies on the assumption that the behaviour of a decision-maker can be explained by concepts such as maximin, minimax regret, or a similarly defined criterion. In reality, however, these criteria represent a spectrum and, the actual behaviour of a decision-maker is most likely to embody a mixture of such idealisations. This paper proposes that in game-theoretic approach to decision-making under uncertainty, a more realistic representation of a decision-maker's behaviour can be achieved by synthesising games-against-nature with goal programming into a single framework. The proposed formulation is illustrated by using a well-known example from the literature on mathematical programming models for agricultural-decision-making. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.