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arXiv · 2602.01048

Minimizing Inequity in Facility Location Games

Yuhang Guo·Houyu Zhou
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Abstract

This paper studies the problem of minimizing group-level inequity in facility location games on the real line, where agents belong to different groups and may act strategically. We explore a fairness-oriented objective that minimizes the maximum group effect introduced by Marsh and Schilling (1994). Each group's effect is defined as its total or maximum distance to the nearest facility, weighted by group-specific factors. We show that this formulation generalizes several prominent optimization objectives, including the classical utilitarian (social cost) and egalitarian (maximum cost) objectives, as well as two group-fair objectives, maximum total and average group cost. In order to minimize the maximum group effect, we first propose two novel mechanisms for the single-facility case, the BALANCED mechanism and the MajorPhantom mechanism. Both are strategyproof and achieve tight approximation guarantees under distinct formulations of the maximum group effect objective. Our mechanisms recover the known tight approximation guarantees for classical group-fair objectives as special cases, while extending them to a broader weighted framework and unifying several classical truthful mechanisms.

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Yuhang Guo, Houyu Zhou. 2026-02-01. Minimizing Inequity in Facility Location Games. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01048

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