Trust-Based Game-Theoretical Decision Making for Food-Energy-Water Management

Abstract

Decision making has been an essential aspect of the life of both individuals or organizations. We all have to face situations where we need to decide whether a daily one such as having coffee or tea in the breakfast or selecting a graduate school for Ph.D. The importance of a decision increases as the duration of the impact of its results and the number of people that are affected increases. Food-Energy-Water (FEW) is one of the fields where the impacts can stay for a long time and affect many people and areas. In this paper, we proposed a game theory-based approach for decision making among FEW actors sharing a finite amount of continuous resource where actors have different weights on their trust and the amount of share that they receive in their payoff functions. Then, we run simulations on scenarios utilizing a more realistic discrete solution set for actors. Results have shown that when actors place more weight on trust in their payoff function, they tend to propose fairer solutions that are closer to the consensus point. Also, they move towards that point faster compared to actors with low trust weight.