Diversified Multinomial Logit Contextual Bandits
Existing contextual multinomial logit (MNL) bandits model relevance-driven choice but ignore the potential benefits of within-assortment diversity, while submodular/combinatorial bandits encode diversity in rewards but lack structured choice probabilities. We bridge this gap with the $\textit{diversified multinomial logit}$ (DMNL) contextual bandit, which augments MNL choice probabilities with a generally submodular diversity function, thereby formalizing the relevance--diversity trade-off within a single model. Incorporating diversity renders exact MNL assortment optimization intractable. We