Intensity of preference

Intensity of preference, also known as intensity preference, is a term used to identify and describe what happens in a process which leads to consensus agreement or consensus ranking. The phrase recognizes that decisions and decision-making involve intensity of feeling about a choice and the choice preference itself.
The concept of preference intensity has been criticized over the past sixty years because of the problems in measuring it. The term is used in economics, politics, marketing and other areas.
History.
Ranking and consensus have been the subject of research for 200+ years.
In the 20th century, the term intensity of preference was coined by the work of the economist Kenneth Arrow, who was a recipient of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Analysis.
Intensity of preference is a factor in an analysis of how individual choices develop into social choices. Standard election procedures notoriously ignore differences in intensity of preferences.
For example, the intensity of preference is a one of many factors which are important in voting. The term is a measure of an individual voter's (or group of voters') willingness to do something. Intensity of preference focuses on the inconveniences involved in the act of officially registering a choice at a specific time and place, not the vote itself. For example, the lines for voting in South Africa's 1994 election were very long. The "intensity of preference" and the inconvenience of voting were factors in the election of Nelson Mandela.