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Liquid Democracy in Group-based Configuration

Group-based configuration systems support scenarios where a group of users configures a product/service. In those groupbased configuration scenarios where the knowledge of some group members regarding items is insufficient, an advice of experts is necessary in order to help members to evaluate products or services. This paper introduces a novel approach which takes advantage of the concept of liquid democracy that allows the delegation of group member votes to experts. Concerning the application of liquid democracy, we propose a new approach based on Multi-attribute Utility theory (MAUT)-based evaluation used to calculate the utility of configurable items. Compared to the traditional approach, the proposed MAUT-based evaluation focuses on the role of experts by assigning higher weights to them. Additionally, the respective expertise level of the experts is taken into account. Consequently, the main contribution of this paper consists in the improvement of group-based configuration by taking liquid democracy aspects into consideration.