Luce’s Choice Axiom (hereafter LCA) is a quantitative
hypothesis about choice behavior first proposed and
analysed by Luce (1959). It envisions a setting in which
an individual makes repeated choices from a set A
containing N alternatives: A (a , a , …, aN) (e.g., N
restaurants). Sometimes all N alternatives are available
for selection (all the restaurants are open); on
other occasions only subsets of A are available (some
restaurants are closed). On each occasion exactly one
alternative is chosen. Choice is assumed to be probabilistic:
faced with the same set of alternatives on
different occasions, the individual may make different
choices.P(i; S) denotes the probability that ai is chosen
when the set of available alternatives is S; e.g., P(1; A)
is the probability that a is chosen when all N
alternatives are available, and if S a , a , a ,
P(1; S) is the probability that a is chosen when only
a , a , and a are available. The special case of 2-
alternative choice (known as ‘paired comparison’)
arises often and has its own notation: P(i, j) is the
probability of choosing ai when the available set is
ai, aj .