Documents

DOI

Existing multi-behavior recommendations tend to prioritize performance at the expense of explainability, while current explainable methods suffer from limited generalizability due to their reliance on external information. Neuro-Symbolic integration offers a promising avenue for explainability by combining neural networks with symbolic logic rule reasoning. Concurrently, we posit that user behavior chains (e.g., view-→cart-→buy) inherently embody an endogenous logic suitable for explicit reasoning. However, these observational multiple behaviors are plagued by confounders, causing models to learn spurious correlations. By incorporating causal inference into this Neuro-Symbolic framework, we propose a novel Causal Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning model for Explainable Multi-Behavior Recommendation (CNRE). CNRE operationalizes the endogenous logic by simulating a human-like decision-making process. Specifically, CNRE first employs hierarchical preference propagation to capture heterogeneous cross-behavior dependencies. Subsequently, it models the endogenous logic rule implicit in the user's behavior chain based on preference strength, and adaptively dispatches to the corresponding neural-logic reasoning path (e.g., conjunction ∧, disjunction ∨). This process generates an explainable causal mediator that approximates an ideal state isolated from confounding effects. Extensive experiments on three large-scale datasets demonstrate CNRE's significant superiority over state-of-the-art baselines, offering multi-level explainability from model design and decision process to recommendation results.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWWW 2026 - Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2026
Place of PublicationNew York, USA
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages6400-6410
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)979-8-4007-2307-0
ISBN (Print)9798400723070
DOIs
StatePublished - 12 Apr 2026
EventACM Web Conference 2026 - UAE, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 13 Apr 2026 → 17 Apr 2026

Publication series

NameIEEE transactions on big data
Volume99
ISSN (Electronic)2332-7790

Conference

ConferenceACM Web Conference 2026
Country/TerritoryUnited Arab Emirates
CityDubai
Period13/04/26 → 17/04/26

    Research areas

  • causal inference, explainable recommendation, multi-behavior recommendation, neuro-symbolic reasoning

ID: 160367131