Robustness and information levels in case-based multiple criteria sorting

Case-based preference elicitation methods for multiple criteria sorting problems have the advantage of posing rather small cognitive demands on a decision maker, but they may lead to ambiguous results when preference parameters are not uniquely determined. We use a simulation approach to determine the extent of this problem and to study the impact of additional case information on the quality of results. Our experiments compare two decision analysis tools, case-based distance sorting and the simple additive weighting method, in terms of the effects of additional case information on sorting performance, depending on problem dimension - number of groups, number of criteria, etc. Our results confirm the expected benefit of additional case information on the precision of estimates of the decision maker's preferences. Problem dimension, however, has some unexpected effects. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.