Decision Making Under Complexity
A special issue of Games (ISSN 2073-4336). This special issue belongs to the section "Behavioral and Experimental Game Theory".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 18
Special Issue Editors
Interests: decision science; behavioral economics; game theory
Interests: behavioural decision making and judgement; decisions under uncertainty; intertemporal decisions; social influences; individual and social decision making; nudging
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We live in a highly complex society, facing complicated challenges that range from saving for pensions to pricing sustainable investments, and from adopting new technologies to addressing environmental challenges. In many of these situations, decision makers (individual households, fund managers, organizations, or governments) often find the decision environment or the choice options in the decision environment too complex and struggle to find the right decision.
When decision makers perceive complexity, they may not consider all relevant information but direct their attention to salient features. This biased information processing increases the likelihood of decision errors, making choices noisier and, in many cases, systematically biased. For example, they may behave cautiously by sticking to the default, postponing their decisions if possible, changing their minds when facing the same decision, using less costly but error-prone heuristics, or opting for satisficing instead of maximizing.
This Special Issue explores the consequences of complexity in decision making using insights from game theory, economics, psychology, and neuroscience. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Complexity in strategic interaction and games: The impact of complexity on coordination, competition, and cooperation in multi-agent settings.
Complexity and individual decision making: How cognitive limitations, heuristics, and procedural decision-making shape behavior in complex environments.
Conceptualization and measurement of complexity: Theoretical approaches, formal models, and empirical measures of decision complexity in economics and beyond.
Complexity and behavioral anomalies: Revisiting classic biases (e.g., winner’s curse, default effects, procrastination, preference reversals, loss aversion) through the lens of decision complexity.
Policy design and complexity: How policy complexity affects comprehension, uptake, and effectiveness in areas such as pensions, taxation, health care, and climate policy.
Markets, organizations, and complexity: The role of complexity in pricing sustainable investments, adoption of innovations, organizational decision processes, and market responses.
Cross-disciplinary perspectives on complexity: Insights from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science on how agents perceive, process, and cope with complex choice environments.
Tools and interventions to manage complexity: Nudges, simplification strategies, digital tools, and institutional designs that help decision makers navigate complex environments.
Dr. Jianying Qiu
Prof. Dr. Zhihua Li
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Games is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- complexity
- uncertainty
- ambiguity
- complex strategy
- biases
- noises
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