Negotiation and reconciliation of preferences in a group recommender system

Abstract

This article presents an approach to group recommender systems that focuses its attention on the group’s social interaction during the formulation, discussion and negotiation of the features the item to be jointly selected should possess. Current group recommender techniques are mainly based on aggregating existing user profiles or on a profile of the group as a whole. Our method supports collaborative preference elicitation and negotiation process where desired features have to be chosen individually, but group consensus is needed for them to become active in the item filtering process. Users provide feedback on the selected preferences and change their significance, bringing up new recommendations each time individual settings are modified. The last stage in the decision process is also supported, when users collectively select the final item from the recommendation set. We explored the possible benefits of our approach through the development of three prototypes, each based on a different variant of the approach with a different emphasis on private and group-wide preference spaces. They were evaluated with user groups of different size, addressing questions regarding the effectiveness of different information sharing methods and the repercussion of group size in the recommendation process. We compare the different methods and consolidate the findings in an initial model of recommending for group.