Intensity of preference

Intensity of preference, also known as intensity preference,Harvey, Charles M.  "Aggregation of individuals' preference intensities into social preference intensity," Social Choice and Welfare, January 1999, Volume 16, Issue 1, pp 65-79; retrieved 2012-12-12. is a term used to identify and describe what happens in a process which leads to consensus agreement or consensus ranking.Cook, Wade D. and Moshe Kress,  "Ordinal Ranking with Intensity of Preference," Management Science (US), Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 26-32; retrieved 2012-12-12.  The phrase recognizes that decisions and decision-making involve intensity of feeling about a choice and the choice preference itself.

The concept of preference intensity has been criticized over the past sixty years because of the problems in measuring it.Farquhar, Peter H. and L. Robin Kelly.  "Preference Intensity Measurement,"  Annals of Operations Research, 19 (1989) 205-217; retrieved 2012-12-12. The term is used in economics, politics, marketing and other areas.

History
Ranking and consensus have been the subject of research for 200+ years.
In the 20th century, the term intensity of preference was coined by the work of the economist Kenneth Arrow, who was a recipient of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics. Kenneth Arrow at NobelPrize.org ; retrieved 2012-12-12.

Analysis
Intensity of preference is a factor in an analysis of how individual choices develop into social choices.  Standard election procedures notoriously ignore differences in intensity of preferences.Sadurski, Wojciech. (1989). Moral Pluralism and Legal Neutrality, p. 35.

For example, the intensity of preference is a one of many factors which are important in voting.  The term is a measure of an individual voter's (or group of voters') willingness to do something.  Intensity of preference focuses on the inconveniences involved in the act of officially registering a choice at a specific time and place, not the vote itself.Arrow, Kenneth J. (1963). Social Choice and Individual Values, p. 114.  For example, the lines for voting in South Africa's 1994 election were very long. "The Election of Nelson Mandela " at South Africa: A Country Study, 1996; excerpt, "... more than 22 million voters stood in line for hours at some 9,000 polling places to exercise their newly won right to vote"; retrieved 2012-12-12.  The "intensity of preference" and the inconvenience of voting were factors in the election of Nelson Mandela.

Related pages
 Consensus
 Majority rule
 False consensus
 Plural ignorance

Notes

Other websites
  Intensity Measures of Consumer Preferences

Category:Economics
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