Eliciting agents’ behaviour and model validation using role playing game in agent-based dairy supply chain model

Abstract

Role playing games have been widely used to develop and validate an agent-based model by observing players’ behaviour. Our study focuses on proposing a novel approach to use role-playing games in the development and validation of an agent-based model. Our innovations include matching the game’s parameters and player composition to reality, incorporating the design of experiments into the data collection, and incorporating operational validation steps into the process. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by a case study of a dairy supply chain. Our analysis illustrates that the data obtained from the role playing game are valuable for the validation of agent-based models at the micro-level (process and knowledge representation) and, subsequently, improve the validity of the model at the macro-level.