Negotiation support for multi-party resource allocation: Developing recommendations for decreasing transportation-related air pollution in Budapest

Decisions about how to allocate scarce resources among potential programs a re common sources of conflict in both public and private life. This paper d escribes a case in which negotiation support was provided for a five-member task force trying to reach agreement about how to allocate limited resourc es among programs designed to improve the air quality in Budapest, Hungary. The intervention consisted of a series of facilitated decision conferences , plus individual interviews. The task force eventually reached agreement a bout a recommended package of 15 air quality management programs costing 1, 500 million Hungarian forints. The research makes four significant contribu tions. First, it demonstrated that resource allocation models provide a use ful framework for understanding and facilitating multi-party negotiation pr ocesses. Second, because resource allocation models were elicited individua lly for each group member before building a single group model, it was poss ible to analyze the five-dimensional feasible settlement space (i.e., the j oint distribution of benefits for each task member for all possible resourc e allocation packages). Third, several innovative applications of analytica l techniques (i.e., Pareto-efficiency analyses, numerical and graphical ana lyses of feasible settlement spaces and efficient frontiers, and analyses o f task force members' investment progressions) served to improve understand ing of disagreements within the group and to evaluate the quality of potent ial resource allocation packages. Fourth, changes in individual preferences and group agreement were assessed over time. Group members appeared to cha nge substantially and their level of agreement to increase markedly over ti me.