When latent features meet side information: A preference relation based graph neural network for collaborative filtering

As recommender systems shift from rating-based to interaction-based models, graph neural network-based collaborative filtering models are gaining popularity due to their powerful representation of user-item interactions. However, these models may not produce good item ranking since they focus on explicit preference predictions. Further, these models do not consider side information since they only capture latent feature information of user-item interactions. This study proposes an approach to overcome these two issues by employing preference relation in the graph neural network model for collaborative filtering. Using preference relation ensures the model will generate a good ranking of items. The item side information is integrated into the model through a trainable matrix, which is crucial when the data is highly sparse. The main advantage of this approach is that the model can be generalized to any recommendation scenario where a graph neural network is used for collaborative filtering. Experimental results obtained using the recent RS datasets show that the proposed model outperformed the related baselines.