CoreRec: A Counterfactual Correlation Inference for Next Set Recommendation

Next set recommendation aims to predict the items that are likely to be bought in the next purchase. Central to this endeavor is the task of capturing intra-set and cross-set correlations among items. However, the modeling of cross-set correlations poses challenges due to specific issues. Primarily, these correlations are often implicit, and the prevailing approach of establishing an indiscriminate link across the entire set of objects neglects factors like purchase frequency and correlations between purchased items. Such hastily formed connections across sets introduce substantial noise. Additionally, the preeminence of high-frequency items in numerous sets could potentially overshadow and distort correlation modeling with respect to low-frequency items. Thus, we devoted to mitigating misleading inter-set correlations. With a fresh perspective rooted in causality, we delve into the question of whether correlations between a particular item and items from other sets should be relied upon for item representation learning and set prediction. Technically, we introduce the Counterfactual Correlation Inference framework for next set recommendation, denoted as CoreRec. This framework establishes a counterfactual scenario in which the recommendation model impedes cross-set correlations to generate intervened predictions. By contrasting these intervened predictions with the original ones, we gauge the causal impact of inter-set neighbors on set prediction—essentially assessing whether they contribute to spurious correlations. During testing, we introduce a post-trained switch module that selects between set-aware item representations derived from either the original or the counterfactual scenarios. To validate our approach, we extensively experiment using three real-world datasets, affirming both the effectiveness of CoreRec and the cogency of our analytical approach.