Axiomatization of an importance index for $k$-ary games

Abstract

We consider MultiCriteria Decision Analysis models which are defined over discrete attributes, taking a finite number of values. We do not assume that the model is monotonically increasing with respect to the attributes values. Our aim is to define an importance index for such general models, considering that they are equivalent to $k$-ary games (multichoice games). We show that classical solutions like the Shapley value are not suitable for such models, essentially because of the efficiency axiom which does not make sense in this context. We propose an importance index which is a kind of average variation of the model along the attributes. We give an axiomatic characterization of it.