Allocation of Importance in a Hierarchial Goal Structure

A weighted additive utility model was used to investigate people's consistency in their allocations of importance and subsequent utility judgments, when a complex goal-subgoal hierarchy was given. In the experiment subjects allocated importance to four policies given each of three objectives and to the objectives under an overall goal. Subjects' task was to evaluate several proposals for a company's future courses of action on the basis of their contribution to the policies, objectives, and overall goal. The results showed that the model described fairly well subjects' consistency in their judgments for importance and utilities, except when they were asked to make judgments for remote, indirect goals.