Decision-Making: From Pure Uncertainty to Measurable Risk

This article presents a multilevel model to support decision-making in accepting or not a recommendation. Acceptance of a recommendation occurs in an open and uncertain environment. To deal with this context, the proposal is to take into account the judgments - or the preferences of the decision maker - to derive degrees of performance and risk; this allows changing the context of decision making, from pure uncertainty to measurable risk. The proposal also considers, with less emphasis, information on the trust and reputation of a referral agent. The evaluation scenario describes a relationship between a contracting agent and a set of service providers; the best-reputed provider and lowest-risk proposition is selected. The result is an approach that allows you to configure the behavior of a contracting agent to act in a more risk-prone or restrictive manner.