17th workshop on

Discrete Choice Models

July 2 - 4, 2026

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland

GC B1 10

The workshop is an informal meeting for the exchange of ideas around discrete choice models, with the objective to trigger new collaborations, or strengthen existing ones, and to expose PhD students to the international community. The participation to the workshop is by invitation only.

Registration fee: 300 CHF.

The registration fee includes: dinner on Thursday, lunch on Friday, lunch on Saturday and coffee breaks.

Keynote speaker: Prateek Bansal

National University of Singapore,

Integrating Attention and Response Time Data into Cognitive Psychology Models to Understand Discrete Choices

Traditional choice data captures outcomes, not processes. Response times and attention patterns, increasingly available at scale through webcam-based eye-tracking, reveal how decisions are made, not just what was chosen. Standard utility models struggle to absorb these signals or explain phenomena like the decoy effect and intra-individual heterogeneity. This talk makes the case for sequential sampling models as a more natural framework: one where attention and response time emerge directly from the decision process, improving both the interpretability of estimates and the efficiency of inference

Prateek
		      Bansal

Prateek Bansal is a Presidential Young (Assistant) Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS in 2022, he was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Imperial College London and did a Ph.D. from Cornell, an MSc from UT Austin, and a BTech from IIT Delhi. Prateek leads the Behavioural Computational Science Lab at NUS and the Adaptive Mobility module at Future Cities Laboratory Global. His research group is interested in creating new methods to address challenging questions related to mobility behavior and the adoption of emerging technologies at an individual level and on an urban scale. His research has led to over 80 journal articles. Apart from the top Transportation journals, he regularly publishes in interdisciplinary journals like Nature Communications and Statistics and Computing. He serves as the Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice and Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. He is a member of the TRB's standing committees on Travel Data & Methods (AED17) and an elected board member of the International Association of Travel Behavior Research (IATBR).

Venue

The workshop will take place at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Room: GC B1 10

Restaurants

To be determined

Program (tentative)

Thursday afternoon
14:00-14:10Welcome
14:10-14:35Talk
14:35-15:00Talk
15:00-15:25Talk
15:25-15:35Simple break (no coffee)
15:35-16:00Talk
16:00-16:25Talk
16:25-16:40Coffee break
16:40-17:05Talk
17:05-17:30Talk
17:30-17:55Talk

Friday morning
09:00-09:45Keynote presentation
09:45-09:55Simple break (no coffee)
09:55-10:20Talk
10:20-10:45Talk
10:45-11:00Coffee break
11:00-11:25Talk
11:25-11:50Talk
11:50-12:15Talk

Friday afternoon
13:45-14:10Talk
14:10-14:35Talk
14:35-15:00Talk
15:00-15:15Coffee break
15:15-15:40Talk
15:40-16:05Talk
16:05-16:15Simple break (no coffee)
16:15-16:45Discussions

Saturday

  • Boat trip Lausanne-Vevey.
  • Lunch: traditional cheese fondue.
  • Walk through the vineyards of Lavaux [Click here].
  • Dinner: BBQ.

List of participants

Name First name Institution Title Abstract Slides
PavelIlinovStGallen UTBA
TBA
SchmidBasilSwiss Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE)A pooled RP/SP mode, route and departure time choice model to investigate travel preferences in Switzerland
As part of the Swiss Mobility and Transport Microcensus (MTMC) 2025, Switzerland's representative travel survey that is conducted every five years, an SP-survey on mode, route and departure time choice was conducted for a subsample of 6’235 respondents. The aim is to provide an empirical basis for the Swiss national transport model (NPVM), the transport perspectives (VP) as well as the value of time studies to update the cost-benefit norms. The SP-tasks are personalized for each respondent based on a revealed preference (RP) trip observed in the MTMC. Based on this dataset, a pooled RP/SP mode, route and departure time choice model will be estimated, accounting for different types of preference heterogeneity.
OrtelliNicolaTransports publics genevois (TPG)TBA
OvaliYaseminKoç University
Prateek BansalPrateekNational University of SingaporeIntegrating Attention and Response Time Data into Cognitive Psychology Models to Understand Discrete Choices
Traditional choice data captures outcomes, not processes. Response times and attention patterns, increasingly available at scale through webcam-based eye-tracking, reveal how decisions are made, not just what was chosen. Standard utility models struggle to absorb these signals or explain phenomena like the decoy effect and intra-individual heterogeneity. This talk makes the case for sequential sampling models as a more natural framework: one where attention and response time emerge directly from the decision process, improving both the interpretability of estimates and the efficiency of inference
PicardNathalieBETA, UnistraTBA
TBA
El YaakoubiYoussefBETA, UnistraNegotiation of joint discrete decisions in dual-earner couples
We develop a collective discrete-choice framework for joint decisions in dual-earner households. Observed outcomes are Pareto efficient and represented by a weighted aggregation of individual utilities, where the Pareto weight captures intra-household bargaining power. The key identification challenge is that this weight and individual utility scales are not separately identified without additional structure. We show that combining egotistic preferences, the private-good structure of individual-specific attributes, and a money-metric normalization delivers point identification of the baseline level of bargaining power, rather than only its variations across households as in existing collective models. The framework requires no observations on prices, income, or budget shares, which opens it to a wide range of empirical settings beyond traditional consumption data. We embed the collective structure in a mixed logit with shared error components, estimated by Bayesian methods, and illustrate the framework on joint commuting and vehicle ownership choices of dual-earner couples from the Paris region.
DJAFONKokouvi JosephUniversity of StrasbourgTrading Off Autonomy: How Girls and Parents Weight Education, Work, and Marriage? Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment in Senegal.
We study how parents and daughters in Senegal evaluate trade-offs between girls’ education, employment, and marriage timing. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, we design a Discrete Choice Experiment and estimate mixed logit models to capture unobserved taste variations. We find that while girls’ human capital and labor market participation are highly valued, these preferences weaken when the prospective husband is economically advantaged, suggesting a substitution logic. Preferences vary by region, gender, household structure, and economic vulnerability. The findings reveal that social norms and economic constraints jointly shape aspirations and behaviors. Even when aspirations for education and employment are high, immediate marriage-market opportunities can lead families to deprioritize long-term investments in girls’ autonomy. The paper contributes to understanding how households navigate normative and economic pressures and calls for policies that go beyond supply-side access, addressing the demand-side logic of marriage decisions.
GomezLuisBETA, UnistraTBA
de Palmaandré CYU CERGY PARIS UNIVERSITETBA
TBA
SegerMarcelUniversity of OxfordCommuter preferences for smart and bidirectional EV workplace charging: Evidence from a stated choice experiment in the UK and Germany
CherchiElisabettaNew York University Abu Dhabi
MehdiSheikh ZeinoddinUnidistance SuisseThe Value of Time: a Dynamic Approach to Passenger Expectations
TBA
Transport and Mobility Laboratory

The workshop is organized by the Transport and Mobility Laboratory, EPFL.

EPFL