ConvApparel: A Benchmark Dataset and Validation Framework for User Simulators in Conversational Recommenders

AbstractThe promise of *LLM-based user simulators* to improve conversational AI is hindered by a critical "realism gap," leading to systems that are optimized for simulated interactions, but may fail to perform well in the real world. We introduce *ConvApparel*, a new dataset of human-AI conversations designed to address this gap. Its unique dual-agent data collection protocol, using both "good" and "bad" recommenders, enables counterfactual validation by capturing a wide spectrum of user experiences, enriched with first-person annotations of user satisfaction.We propose a comprehensive validation framework that combines *statistical alignment*, a *human-likeness score*, and *counterfactual validation* to test for generalization.Our experiments reveal a significant realism gap across all simulators. However, the framework also shows that data-driven simulators outperform a prompted baseline, particularly in counterfactual validation where they adapt more realistically to unseen behaviors, suggesting they embody more robust, if imperfect, user models.