Properties underlying a preference aggregator based on satisficing logic

The basic purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical properties underlying the compromise consensuses derived from a general social choice function recently proposed in the literature. This type of social choice function is based on a satisficing logic and encompasses, as particular cases, scenarios for which individual preferences are ordinal (complete or incomplete) or cardinal (provided by utility functions or through pairwise comparisons). We analyze the usual properties required for any preferential aggregation procedure such as decisiveness, neutrality, anonymity, monotonicity, and unanimity. It is interesting to note that the properties may be expressed algebraically in the proposed approach. Hence, a property that does not hold can be imposed as a rigid or flexible constraint. In this way, the resulting compromise consensus holds the respective property, if the respective model is feasible or partially holds the property in a situation of infeasibility modeled by flexible or goal constraints.