A control approach to non-monetary and non-coercive influencing strategies of dynamic human decision making

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is to investigate non-monetary and non-coercive influencing strategies for human decision making in different scenarios, using dynamical system and control theoretic tools and viewpoints. First, we consider the problem of a strategic information design for a boundedly rational decision maker. In this scenario, bounded rationality manifests itself through the presence of a predisposition vector, which influences how the information is used and which itself varies dynamically, depending on the choice outcome of the decision maker. The information is generated in the framework of a control system design, and we show that an arbitrary social behavior can be created and stabilized if certain conditions can be satisfied. In a special case when there are only two alternatives, we can furthermore show that the closed-loop system undergoes a Hopf bifurcation when the created equilibrium loses stability. In the second scenario, we investigate how to influence people by manipulating a default setting in the context of indoor thermal comfort. Such manipulations can be managed strategically for the purpose of altering the thermal comfort expectation of the occupants. We formally characterize when the occupants ignore or override the default setting, and we use a linear system to incorporate the process of manipulation and habituation. We show that the model can capture behaviors observed in the existing literatures. Treating the default temperature as a control input, we then formulate an optimal control problem and demonstrate that a carefully designed profile can be used to balance goals between an immediate energy saving and a comfort expectation reshaping.