Hedonic Utility Games

What is it about?

We initiate the study of a novel class of cooperative games, the Hedonic Utility Games (HUGs), that takes into consideration both hedonic and utility-related preferences. We first formally define HUGs, and show how to extend and apply existing stability solution concepts to them. Then, we put forward the novel Individually Rational - Individually Stable (IRIS) solution concept, developed specifically for HUGs, that characterizes the stability of coalition structures in such settings. In addition, we propose a natural, "trichotomous'' hedonic preferences model; study certain HUGs’ properties in that model; and exploit it to characterize the feasibility of HUGs coalitions, and to obtain a probability bound for pruning the coalitional space, thus reducing the computational load of computing kernel-stable payoff configurations for IRIS partitions.

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