TrustTF: A tensor factorization model using user trust and implicit feedback for context-aware recommender systems

In recent years, context information has been widely used in recommender systems. Tensor factorization is an effective method to process high-dimensional information. However, data sparsity is more serious in tensor factorization, and it is difficult to build a more accurate recommender system only based on user–item–context interaction information. Making full use of user’s social information and implicit feedback can alleviate this problem. In this paper, we propose a new tensor factorization model named TrustTF, which mainly works as follows: (1) Using user’s social trust information and implicit feedback to extend the bias tensor factorization (BiasTF), effectively alleviate data sparsity problem and improve the recommendation accuracy; (2) Dividing user’s trust relationship into unilateral trust and mutual trust, which makes better use of user’s social information. To our knowledge, this is the first work to consider the effects of both user trust and implicit feedback on the basis of the BiasTF model. The experimental results in two real-world data sets demonstrate that the TrustTF proposed in this paper can achieve higher accuracy than BiasTF and other social recommendation methods.