Bidding Support by the Pocket Negotiator Improves Negotiation Outcomes

Abstract

This paper presents the negotiation support mechanisms provided by the Pocket Negotiator (PN) and an elaborate empirical evaluation of the economic decision support (EDS) mechanisms during the bidding phase of negotiations as provided by the PN. Some of these support mechanisms are offered actively, some passively. With passive support we mean that the user only gets that support by clicking a button, whereas active support is provided without prompting. Our results show, that PN improves negotiation outcomes, counters cognitive depletion, and encourages exploration of potential outcomes. We found that the active mechanisms were used more effectively than the passive ones and, overall, the various mechanisms were not used optimally, which opens up new avenues for research. As expected, the participants with higher negotiation skills outperformed the other groups, but still they benefited from PN support. Our experimental results show that people with enough technical skills and with some basic negotiation knowledge will benefit most from PN support. Our results also show that the cognitive depletion effect is reduced by Pocket Negotiator support. The questionnaire taken after the experiment shows that overall the participants found Pocket Negotiator easy to interact with, that it made them negotiate more quickly and that it improves their outcome. Based on our findings, we recommend to 1) provide active support mechanisms (push) to nudge users to be more effective, and 2) provide support mechanisms that shield the user from mathematical complexities.