Rational Choice Hypothesis as X-point of Utility Function and Norm Function

Document pages: 15 pages

Abstract: Towards the realization of a sustainable, fair and inclusive society, weproposed a novel decision-making model that incorporates social norms in arational choice model from the standpoints of deontology and utilitarianism. Weproposed a hypothesis that interprets choice of action as the X-point forindividual utility function that increases with actions and social normfunction that decreases with actions. This hypothesis is based on humanspsychologically balancing the value of utility and norms in selecting actions.Using the hypothesis and approximation, we were able to isolate and inferutility function and norm function from real-world measurement data of actionson environmental conditions and elucidate the interaction between the bothfunctions that led from current status to target actions. As examples ofcollective data that aggregate decision-making of individuals, we looked at thechanges in power usage before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and thecorrelation between national GDP and CO2 emission in different countries. Thefirst example showed that the perceived benefits of power (i.e., utility ofpower usage) was stronger than the power usage restrictions imposed by normsafter the earthquake, contrary to our expectation. The second example showedthat a reduction of CO2 emission in each country was not related to utilityderived from GDP but to norms related to CO2 emission. Going forward, we willapply this new X-point model to actual social practices involving normativeproblems, and design the approaches for the diagnosis, prognosis andintervention of social systems by IT systems.