Fairness in constrained spectral clustering

Semi-supervised clustering methods have gained significant attention in both theoretical research and real-world applications, including economics, finance, marketing, and healthcare. Among these methods, constrained spectral clustering enhances clustering quality by incorporating pairwise constraints, namely, must-link and cannot-link constraints, which guide the clustering process by specifying whether certain data points should or should not belong to the same cluster. However, traditional constrained spectral clustering methods may inadvertently propagate biases present in the data or constraints, leading to unequal representation of sensitive groups, such as different genders or racial groups, across clusters. This imbalance raises concerns about fairness, an issue that remains largely unexplored in constrained spectral clustering. To address this gap, this paper proposes a novel method named fair-constrained Spectral Clustering (fair-cSC). The proposed method integrates fairness into the must-link and cannot-link constraints by defining a fair constraint matrix, ensuring that pairwise relationships do not introduce bias against any particular group. Additionally, a balance constraint is incorporated to enforce fairness across input data points, promoting equal representation of sensitive groups within clusters. Comprehensive experiments on six benchmarked datasets, including ablation studies, demonstrate that the proposed fair-cSC method effectively enhances fairness while preserving clustering quality. Furthermore, the ablation study provides insights into the method’s performance under different settings, reinforcing its robustness and applicability in real-world scenarios.