Solvability of variational inequality problems

This paper presents the new concept of exceptional family of elements for the variational inequality problem with a continuous function over a general unbounded closed convex set. We establish a characterization theorem that can be used to derive several new existence and compactness conditions on the solution set. Our findings generalize well-known results for various types of variational inequality problems. For a pseudomonotone variational inequality problem, our new existence conditions are both sufficient and necessary.