A stage model for agent-based emotional persuasion with an adaptive target: From a social exchange perspective

•An agent-based emotional persuasion model is built from a social exchange perspective.•Emotion, similarity and familiarity are synthesized to depict agents’ persuasion.•The Weber-Fechner Law is applied to model the generating process of emotion.•A cloud model is used to measure similarity between agents with negotiating progress.•The proposed model improves the fairness of negotiating outcomes and agents’ welfare.