Recommending Crowdfunding Project: A Graph Kernel-Based Link Prediction Method for Extremely Sparse Implicit Feedback

It is a critical task to provide recommendation on implicit feedback, and one of the biggest challenges is extreme data sparsity. To tackle the problem, a graph kernel-based link prediction method is proposed in this paper for recommending crowdfunding projects combining graph computing with collaborative filtering. First of all, an investor-project bipartite graph is established based on transaction histories. Then, a random walk graph kernel is constructed and computed, and a one-class SVM classifier is built for link prediction based on implicit feedback. At last, top N recommendations are made according to the ranking of investor-project pairs. Comparative experiments are conducted and the results show that the proposed method achieves the best performance on extremely sparse implicit feedback and outperforms baselines. This paper is of help to improve the success rate of crowdfunding by personalized recommendation and is of significance to enrich the research in recommendation systems.