Enhancing sparse data recommendations with self-inspected adaptive SMOTE and hybrid neural networks

Abstract

Personalized recommendation systems are vital for enhancing user satisfaction and reducing information overload, especially in data-sparse environments like e-commerce platforms. This paper introduces a novel hybrid framework that combines Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) with a modified Split-Convolution (SC) neural network (LSTM-SC) and an advanced sampling technique—Self-Inspected Adaptive SMOTE (SASMOTE). Unlike traditional SMOTE, SASMOTE adaptively selects “visible” nearest neighbors and incorporates a self-inspection strategy to filter out uncertain synthetic samples, ensuring high-quality data generation. Additionally, Quokka Swarm Optimization (QSO) and Hybrid Mutation-based White Shark Optimizer (HMWSO) are employed for optimizing sampling rates and hyperparameters, respectively. Experiments conducted on the goodbooks-10k and Amazon review datasets demonstrate significant improvements in RMSE, MAE, and R² metrics, proving the superiority of the proposed model over existing deep learning and collaborative filtering techniques. The framework is scalable, interpretable, and applicable across diverse domains, particularly in e-commerce and electronic publishing.