Numerical Analysis of Effect of Sampling of Alternatives in Discrete Choice Models

A large number of alternatives characterize the choice set in many activity and travel choice contexts. Analysts generally sample alternatives from the choice set in such situations because estimating models from the full choice set can be very expensive or even prohibitive. This paper undertakes numerical experiments to examine the effect of the sample size of alternatives on model performance for both an MNL model (for which consistency with a subset of alternatives is guaranteed) and a mixed multinomial logit model (for which no consistency result holds).