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arXiv · 2606.13201

A Minimal Model of Bounded Trade-Off Screening in Multi-Attribute Choice

Manisha Dubey·Anirban Sarkar·Subramanian Ramamoorthy
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Abstract

Human decision-making often involves choosing between multi-attribute alternatives, yet classical models assume fully compensatory utility aggregation despite evidence that people reject options with poor performance on critical attributes. We propose a bounded trade-off reasoning framework in which decisions are governed by a screening process that evaluates the balance between gains and losses across attributes. The model introduces a trade-off tolerance parameter that controls acceptable imbalance and can vary across contexts. Through simulation, we show that this mechanism produces preference patterns that differ from standard utility-based models and captures context-dependent variation in trade-off behavior. These results establish bounded trade-off screening as a plausible computational mechanism for multi-attribute choice and generate testable predictions for future behavioral studies.

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Manisha Dubey, Anirban Sarkar, Subramanian Ramamoorthy. 2026-06-11. A Minimal Model of Bounded Trade-Off Screening in Multi-Attribute Choice. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13201

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