Maximum Utility Consensus with Inequity Aversion in Social Network Group Decision Making

Consensus is an essential topic in social network group decision making (SNGDM). In the consensus process, maximizing the group utility is conducive to allowing the moderator to efficiently consider the interests of all parties. However, this issue is neglected in most of the extant studies. Inequity aversion is a common behavior that the individuals often exhibit in the group context, which has a significant impact on the utility of individuals in the decision group. Motivated by this, in this paper we investigate the maximum utility consensus problem with inequity aversion in SNGDM. Firstly, we define the individuals' utility functions with inequity aversion in the consensus process of SNGDM. Notably, in the proposed utility function, the envy and guilt degrees among individuals are determined by their node similarities. Afterward, we present a novel maximum utility consensus model in SNGDM based on inequity aversion (i.e., MUCM-IA) to maximize the utility of the whole network group. Additionally, some simulation studies and comparative analyses are carried out to explore how inequity aversion affects the outcomes of consensus reaching. Finally, an application in cooperation mode selection of supermarket alliance with real social network data is given to prove the validity of our proposal.