Multi-attribute utility models as cognitive search engines

In optimal stopping problems,decision makers are assumed to search randomly to learn the utility of alternatives;in contrast,in one-shot multi-attribute utility optimization,decision makers are assumed to have perfect knowledge ofutilities. we point out that these two contexts represent the boundaries of a continuum,of which the middle remainsuncharted: how should people search intelligently when they possess imperfect information about the alternatives? weassume that decision makers first estimate the utility of each available alternative and then search the alternatives in order oftheir estimated utility until expected benefits are outweighed by search costs. we considered three well-known models forestimating utility: (i) a linear multi-attribute model,(ii) equal weighting of attributes,and (iii) a single-attribute heuristic.we used 12 real-world decision problems,ranging from consumer choice to industrial experimentation,to measure theperformance of the three models. the full model (i) performed best on average but its simplifications (ii and iii) also hadregions of superior performance. we explain the results by analyzing the impact of the models’ utility order and estimationerror. © 2014.