Aggregation of preferences in an environmental economics context: a goal-programming approach

This paper has been devised with two different and at the same time complementary aims. First, to propose a methodology based upon goal programming that allows the aggregation of individual preferences provided by several social groups towards different criteria in a cardinal manner. The main feature of the procedure lies in the easy utility interpretation of the social consensus obtained. Second, to apply the proposed methodology to a case study on electricity planning in Spain within an environmental context, where several criteria of different nature and some social groups with different interests are involved. The social weights that have to be attached to the different criteria in a multi-objective programming model are obtained this way. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.