Acquisition of a concession strategy in multi-issue negotiation

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Yasumura, Yoshiaki | Kamiryo, Takahiko | Yoshikawa, Shohei | Uehara, Kuniaki

Affiliations: Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University, Japan

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract: This paper presents a method for acquiring a concession strategy of an agent in multi-issue negotiation. This method learns how to make a concession to an opponent for realizing win-win negotiation. To learn the concession strategy, we adopt reinforcement learning. First, an agent receives a proposal from an opponent. The agent recognizes a negotiation state using the difference between their proposals and the difference between their concessions. According to the state, the agent makes a proposal by reinforcement learning. A reward of the learning is a profit of an agreement and a punishment of negotiation breakdown. The experimental results showed that the agents could acquire the negotiation strategy that avoids negotiation breakdown and increases profits of an agreement. As a result, agents can acquire the action policy that strikes a balance between cooperation and competition.

Keywords: Multi-issue negotiation, concession strategy, reinforcement learning, win-win negotiation

DOI: 10.3233/WIA-2009-0160

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An International Journal, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 161-171, 2009