Recommend-to-Match with Random Supply Rejections: Formulation, Approximation, and Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Haoyue, Liu, Sheng, Qi, Mingyao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Liu, Haoyue
Liu, Sheng
Qi, Mingyao
author_facet Liu, Haoyue
Liu, Sheng
Qi, Mingyao
contents Matching demand with supply in crowdsourcing logistics platforms must contend with uncertain worker participation. Motivated by this challenge, we study a two-stage "recommend-to-match" problem under stochastic supplier rejections, where each demand is initially recommended to multiple potential suppliers prior to final matching decisions. We formulate a stochastic optimization model that explicitly captures uncertain supplier acceptance behavior. For the special case with homogeneous and independent acceptance responses, an exact mixed-integer linear program and LP formulations are achievable, but the general problem does not admit an efficient formulation. Particularly, our analysis reveals that deterministic linear approximation methods can perform arbitrarily poorly in such settings. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new approximation approach based on a convex relaxation of the original problem that admits a mixed-integer exponential cone program (MIECP) formulation. We analyze the structural properties of this approximation and establish its parametric performance guarantees. We also characterize conditions under which it can dominate a deterministic approximation. Extensive experiments on synthetic data and real-world freight data validate the effectiveness of our approach. Our MIECP-based solution achieves near-optimal matching performance while reducing computation time by over 90% compared to benchmark methods, which makes it particularly promising for large-scale matching problems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_19122
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Recommend-to-Match with Random Supply Rejections: Formulation, Approximation, and Analysis
Liu, Haoyue
Liu, Sheng
Qi, Mingyao
Optimization and Control
Discrete Mathematics
Matching demand with supply in crowdsourcing logistics platforms must contend with uncertain worker participation. Motivated by this challenge, we study a two-stage "recommend-to-match" problem under stochastic supplier rejections, where each demand is initially recommended to multiple potential suppliers prior to final matching decisions. We formulate a stochastic optimization model that explicitly captures uncertain supplier acceptance behavior. For the special case with homogeneous and independent acceptance responses, an exact mixed-integer linear program and LP formulations are achievable, but the general problem does not admit an efficient formulation. Particularly, our analysis reveals that deterministic linear approximation methods can perform arbitrarily poorly in such settings. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new approximation approach based on a convex relaxation of the original problem that admits a mixed-integer exponential cone program (MIECP) formulation. We analyze the structural properties of this approximation and establish its parametric performance guarantees. We also characterize conditions under which it can dominate a deterministic approximation. Extensive experiments on synthetic data and real-world freight data validate the effectiveness of our approach. Our MIECP-based solution achieves near-optimal matching performance while reducing computation time by over 90% compared to benchmark methods, which makes it particularly promising for large-scale matching problems.
title Recommend-to-Match with Random Supply Rejections: Formulation, Approximation, and Analysis
topic Optimization and Control
Discrete Mathematics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.19122