Experimental Assessment of Agent-Supported Electronic Negotiations.

This article presents the results of experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of agent support in e-negotiations. The agent-enhanced e-negotiation system eAgora has been used in the experiments. The system features an agent that assists the user in generating candidate offers, evaluating and critiquing incoming offers, and critiquing counteroffers. The work investigates the effects of agent support and task complexity on negotiation performance and perceived measures of usefulness, satisfaction, ease of use, and confidence. Overall, the results support the expectation that use of an agent leads to higher level of negotiation effectiveness, in particular for higher complexity tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]