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FairSpec: Expert Specialization for Fair LLM-based Recommendation

sigir26-128 · Full research paper · Yuchen Zheng, Xuan Pan, Jing Wang, Chuanchang Zhang, Xi Lin, Chunyao Song, Xiangrui Cai, Xiaojie Yuan
Preference Alignment and Optimizatio · 50% Bias Mitigation Methods · 50%
Abstract

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into recommender systems has introduced a powerful paradigm for personalized recommedation. However, due to biases stemming from sensitive user attributes (e.g., gender, age), LLMs may generate discriminatory and unfair recommendations, even for users with similar preferences. Existing methods to improve LLM-based recommendation fairness, like prompt engineering or data-processing, are often unstable and fail to address unfairness rooted in pre-training data and model parameters. While fine-tuning approaches show promise, improving fairness typically comes at the cost of degraded recommendation performance, as the model's parameters conflates user preferences with sensitive attributes. To address this, we propose FairSpec, a novel lightweight fine-tuning framework designed to enhance fairness while preserving recommendation quality. FairSpec has a Parameter-Efficient Mixture-of-Experts architecture (PE-MoE) with a fairness-aware router. The experts are specialized into utility experts and fairness experts, and the latter are adversarially trained to suppress sensitive information. Furthermore, FairSpec introduces Fairness-Aware Direct Preference Optimization (FA-DPO), which employs a composite reward function to jointly optimize recommendation performance and fairness. Results on three public benchmarks with four LLM backbones demonstrate that FairSpec achieves the best overall performance-fairness balance, attaining the top average rank across all metrics. Furthermore, visualizations of routing weights illustrate the strategic behavior and effectiveness of the proposed fairness-aware routing mechanism. Our code can be found at https://github.com/qin2mu4/FairSpec.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy)
1 Jizhi Zhang
58
100 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
76 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
71 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
2 Sunhao Dai
56
71 Bias and Unfairness in Information Retrieval Systems: New Challenges in the LLM Era (2024) Bias Mitigation Methods
71 Unifying Bias and Unfairness in Information Retrieval: New Challenges in the LLM Era (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
65 Perplexity Trap: PLM-Based Retrievers Overrate Low Perplexity Documents (2025) Robustness and Adversarial IR
3 Keqin Bao
48
100 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
76 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
71 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Pengyue Jia 43
Area-chair candidates (4)
Pengyue Jia assigned 4310 papers
Jun Xu 0001 432 papers
Xiaoxue Zang 424 papers
Maolin Wang 0001 4115 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
1 Zhengyi Yang 0007 66 3
100 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
71 On Softmax Direct Preference Optimization for Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
2 Jizhi Zhang assigned 58 3
100 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
76 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
3 Chongming Gao 57 3
75 SPRec: Self-Play to Debias LLM-based Recommendation (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
75 Process-Supervised LLM Recommenders via Flow-guided Tuning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
4 Sunhao Dai assigned 56 3
71 Bias and Unfairness in Information Retrieval Systems: New Challenges in the LLM Era (2024) Bias Mitigation Methods
71 Unifying Bias and Unfairness in Information Retrieval: New Challenges in the LLM Era (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
5 Hao Liu 0078 55 3
71 Mitigating Fine-tuning Bias: A Parameter-Efficient Debiasing Framework for Large Language Models (2026) Bias Mitigation Methods
47 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment
6 Yang Zhang 0072 52 3
71 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
71 Reason4Rec: Deliberative User Preference Alignment of Large Language Models for Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization
7 Jiancan Wu 52 3
71 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
71 Towards Robust Alignment of Language Models: Distributionally Robustifying Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
8 Keqin Bao assigned 48 3
100 Item-side Fairness of Large Language Model-based Recommendation System (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
76 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization
9 Yu-An Liu 0028 48 3
65 Robust Neural Information Retrieval: An Adversarial and Out-of-Distribution Perspective (2026) Robustness and Adversarial IR
65 Robust Information Retrieval (2025) Robustness and Adversarial IR
10 Yifan Wang 0017 47 3
71 Intersectional Two-sided Fairness in Recommendation (2024) Popularity Bias and Long-Tail Debiasing
68 Improving Long-tail User CTR Prediction via Hierarchical Distribution Alignment (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
11 Xiao Zhang 0034 45 3
70 Large Language Models Enhanced Collaborative Filtering (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
55 Similarity = Value? Consultation Value-Assessment and Alignment for Personalized Search (2025) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval
12 Bo Chen 0023 45 3
53 Towards efficient and effective unlearning of large language models for recommendation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
49 Large language models make sample-efficient recommender systems (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
13 Shijie Wang 0002 44 3
100 CheatAgent: Attacking LLM-Empowered Recommender Systems via LLM Agent (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization
56 Multi-Agent Attacks for Black-Box Social Recommendations (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
14 Zechun Niu 44 3
46 Distributionally Robust Optimization for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank
45 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank
15 Bowen Zheng 0005 44 3
56 Autonomous Reasoning-Retrieval for Large Language Model Based Recommendation (2025) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking
46 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation
16 Jialong Wu 0007 44 3
71 Causal Prompting: Debiasing Large Language Model Prompting Based on Front-Door Adjustment (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
51 PROPER: A Progressive Learning Framework for Personalized Large Language Models with Group-Level Adaptation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
17 Xuanhua Yang 43 3
57 Breaking the Relevance-Diversity Seesaw: Hierarchical LLM Reasoning with RL for Industrial Novelty Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization
53 GenRec: A Preference-Oriented Generative Framework for Large-Scale Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
18 Sara Allawati 43 3
71 VulGen: Workshop on Vulnerabilities in Generative Systems for Information Retrieval (2026) Bias Mitigation Methods
31 A Comparative Analysis of Linguistic and Retrieval Diversity in LLM-Generated Search Queries (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
19 Theresia Veronika Rampisela 43 3
43 Can We Trust Recommender System Fairness Evaluation? The Role of Fairness and Relevance (2024) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation
43 Evaluation Measures of Individual Item Fairness for Recommender Systems: A Critical Study (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation
20 Seongmin Park 0002 43 3
46 Dual Unbiased Recommender Learning for Implicit Feedback (2021) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation
46 Bilateral Self-unbiased Learning from Biased Implicit Feedback (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation
22 Yimeng Bai 43 3
45 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
45 Leveraging Watch-time Feedback for Short-Video Recommendations: A Causal Labeling Framework (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
23 Junjie Zhang 0009 43 3
53 STARec: An Efficient Agent Framework for Recommender Systems via Autonomous Deliberate Reasoning (2025) RL Training of Search Agents
51 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
24 Min Hou 0004 43 3
71 RecCocktail: A Generalizable and Efficient Framework for LLM-Based Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization
49 InvDiff: Invariant Guidance for Bias Mitigation in Diffusion Models (2025) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation
26 Yongqi Li 0001 43 3
67 R$^2$ec: Towards Large Recommender Models with Reasoning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
49 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking
27 Han Li 0005 43 3
48 LEARN: Knowledge Adaptation from Large Language Model to Recommendation for Practical Industrial Application (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
47 Comprehensive List Generation for Multi-Generator Reranking (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
28 Huifeng Guo 43 3
50 LLMTreeRec: Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models for Cold-Start Recommendations (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization
49 Prompt Tuning as User Inherent Profile Inference Machine (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
29 Jieming Zhu 42 3
50 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment
47 Efficient and Deployable Knowledge Infusion for Open-World Recommendations via Large Language Models (2026) Knowledge Infusion and Open-World Augmentation
30 Yang Song 0008 42 3
45 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
45 UniSAR: Modeling User Transition Behaviors between Search and Recommendation (2024) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
31 Andrew Parry 42 3
65 Axiomatic Guidance for Efficient and Controlled Neural Search (2024) Robustness and Adversarial IR
65 Analyzing Adversarial Attacks on Sequence-to-Sequence Relevance Models (2024) Robustness and Adversarial IR
32 Shuchang Liu 0001 42 3
58 DLCRec: A Novel Approach for Managing Diversity in LLM-Based Recommender Systems (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization
47 Comprehensive List Generation for Multi-Generator Reranking (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking