A Method for Preference Surface Estimation Using Kansei Evaluation

Abstract

The difficulty on kansei evaluation stems from deciding the kansei specifications needed to realize a preference structure, namelyone of the human capabilities. In order to expand the analytical ability, it is of importance to construct a new model which will make clear the structure preferable to the population. In this paper, we attempt to analyze the kansei evaluation based on the least squares estimator and apply the preferential structure model to the data. This method is a special type of experimental design dealing with not absolute comparison, but relative comparison. If P_i is the proportion of the ith comparison subject, the preference structure model for the kansei evaluation with q comparison subjects is characterized by the constraints ΣP_i=1,P_1≧0. In this paper, the linear model z=Σα_iP_i and second-order model z=Σα_iP_i+ΣΣα_<ij>P_iP_j are used. We show computational examples of the preference structure model applied to the kansei evaluation of coffee beans to verify the effectiveness of the solution procedure, and clarify the applicability of the proposed method.