A new flexible and partially monotonic discrete choice model

摘要: The poor predictability and the misspecification arising from hand-crafted utility functions are common issues in theory-driven discrete choice models (DCMs). Data-driven DCMs improve predictability through flexible utility specifications, but they do not address the misspecification issue and provide untrustworthy behavioral interpretations (e.g., biased willingness to pay estimates). Improving interpretability at the minimum loss of flexibility/predictability is the main challenge in the data-driven DCM. To this end, this study proposes a flexible and partially monotonic DCM by specifying the systematic utility using the Lattice networks (i.e., DCM-LN). DCM-LN ensures the monotonicity of the utility function relative to the selected attributes while learning attribute-specific non-linear effects through piecewise linear functions and interaction effects using multilinear interpolations in a data-driven manner. Partial monotonicity …