MCLMR: A Model-Agnostic Causal Learning Framework for Multi-Behavior Recommendation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Ranxu, Meng, Junjie, Sun, Ying, Xu, Ziqi, Yin, Bing, Li, Hao, Zhang, Yanyong, Wang, Chao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Ranxu
Meng, Junjie
Sun, Ying
Xu, Ziqi
Yin, Bing
Li, Hao
Zhang, Yanyong
Wang, Chao
author_facet Zhang, Ranxu
Meng, Junjie
Sun, Ying
Xu, Ziqi
Yin, Bing
Li, Hao
Zhang, Yanyong
Wang, Chao
contents Multi-Behavior Recommendation (MBR) leverages multiple user interaction types (e.g., views, clicks, purchases) to enrich preference modeling and alleviate data sparsity issues in traditional single-behavior approaches. However, existing MBR methods face fundamental challenges: they lack principled frameworks to model complex confounding effects from user behavioral habits and item multi-behavior distributions, struggle with effective aggregation of heterogeneous auxiliary behaviors, and fail to align behavioral representations across semantic gaps while accounting for bias distortions. To address these limitations, we propose MCLMR, a novel model-agnostic causal learning framework that can be seamlessly integrated into various MBR architectures. MCLMR first constructs a causal graph to model confounding effects and performs interventions for unbiased preference estimation. Under this causal framework, it employs an Adaptive Aggregation module based on Mixture-of-Experts to dynamically fuse auxiliary behavior information and a Bias-aware Contrastive Learning module to align cross-behavior representations in a bias-aware manner. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that MCLMR achieves significant performance improvements across various baseline models, validating its effectiveness and generality. All data and code will be made publicly available. For anonymous review, our code is available at the following the link: https://github.com/gitrxh/MCLMR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25126
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MCLMR: A Model-Agnostic Causal Learning Framework for Multi-Behavior Recommendation
Zhang, Ranxu
Meng, Junjie
Sun, Ying
Xu, Ziqi
Yin, Bing
Li, Hao
Zhang, Yanyong
Wang, Chao
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
H.3.3
Multi-Behavior Recommendation (MBR) leverages multiple user interaction types (e.g., views, clicks, purchases) to enrich preference modeling and alleviate data sparsity issues in traditional single-behavior approaches. However, existing MBR methods face fundamental challenges: they lack principled frameworks to model complex confounding effects from user behavioral habits and item multi-behavior distributions, struggle with effective aggregation of heterogeneous auxiliary behaviors, and fail to align behavioral representations across semantic gaps while accounting for bias distortions. To address these limitations, we propose MCLMR, a novel model-agnostic causal learning framework that can be seamlessly integrated into various MBR architectures. MCLMR first constructs a causal graph to model confounding effects and performs interventions for unbiased preference estimation. Under this causal framework, it employs an Adaptive Aggregation module based on Mixture-of-Experts to dynamically fuse auxiliary behavior information and a Bias-aware Contrastive Learning module to align cross-behavior representations in a bias-aware manner. Extensive experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate that MCLMR achieves significant performance improvements across various baseline models, validating its effectiveness and generality. All data and code will be made publicly available. For anonymous review, our code is available at the following the link: https://github.com/gitrxh/MCLMR.
title MCLMR: A Model-Agnostic Causal Learning Framework for Multi-Behavior Recommendation
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
H.3.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25126