A Polynomial-Time Axiomatic Alternative to SHAP for Feature Attribution

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00496v1
• Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2026 06:30:35 GMT
• Title: A Polynomial-Time Axiomatic Alternative to SHAP for Feature Attribution
• Authors: Kazuhiro Hiraki, Shinichi Ishihara, Takumi Kongo, Junnosuke Shino,
• Abstract summary: We study feature attribution through the lens of cooperative game theory by formulating a class of XAI-TU games.<n>We propose a low-cost attribution rule, ESENSC_rev2, constructed by combining two-time closed-form rules.<n>Experiments show that ESENSC_rev2 closely approximates exact SHAP while substantially improving scalability.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: In this paper, we provide a theoretically grounded and computationally efficient alternative to SHAP. To this end, we study feature attribution through the lens of cooperative game theory by formulating a class of XAI--TU games. Building on this formulation, we investigate equal-surplus-type and proportional-allocation-type attribution rules and propose a low-cost attribution rule, ESENSC_rev2, constructed by combining two polynomial-time closed-form rules while ensuring the null-player property in the XAI--TU domain. Extensive experiments on tabular prediction tasks demonstrate that ESENSC_rev2 closely approximates exact SHAP while substantially improving scalability as the number of features increases. These empirical results indicate that equal-surplus-type attribution rules can achieve favorable trade-offs between computational cost and approximation accuracy in high-dimensional explainability settings. To provide theoretical foundations for these findings, we establish an axiomatic characterization showing that ESENSC_rev2 is uniquely determined by efficiency, the null-player axiom, a restricted differential marginality principle, an intermediate inessential-game property, and axioms that reduce computational requirements. Our results suggest that axiomatically justified and computationally efficient attribution rules can serve as practical and theoretically principled substitutes for SHAP-based approximations in modern explainability pipelines.

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