Optimum compromise among environmental dispute issues using attitude based negotiation

Abstract

An innovative tactical negotiation methodology is presented for managing environmental disputes that involve multiple decision makers and multiple conflicting issues. A unique feature of the proposed negotiation methodology is that it takes into account the attitudes of the decision makers, which is an important psychological factor often ignored in traditional conflict resolution methods. A utility analysis is used to develop the methodology, which maximizes the sum of all decision makers’ utility through pair-wise negotiations with respect to each conflicting issue. A real-life environmental dispute is used to illustrate the proposed methodology and to demonstrate the benefits of incorporating attitudes into the negotiation. The proposed attitude-based negotiation constitutes a new systems engineering methodology that will assist environmental professionals in tackling real-world controversies, and provides a mechanism to examine the impact of attitudes on negotiation outcomes.