Additive consistency of risk measures and its application to risk-averse routing in networks

Abstract: This paper investigates the use of risk measures and theories of choice for modeling risk-averse route choice and traffic network equilibrium with random travel times. We interpret the postulates of these theories in the context of routing, and we identify additive consistency as a plausible and relevant condition that allows to reduce risk-averse route choice to a standard shortest path problem. Within the classical theories of choice under risk, we show that the only preferences that satisfy this consistency property are the ones induced by the entropic risk measures.