---
title: "Recourse"
description: "The ability of a person to obtain a different decision by changing inputs they can actually act on, such as income rather than age."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/recourse
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# Recourse

The ability of a person to obtain a different decision by changing inputs they can actually act on, such as income rather than age [1]. Counterfactual explanations restricted to actionable features are its usual engineering form; a system can offer contestation and still leave no recourse.

- Developed in: [ch. 16, Counterfactual explanations](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/fairness-and-explainability#counterfactual-explanations)
- Chapters: [ch. 16, Fairness & XAI](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/fairness-and-explainability) · [ch. 21, AI Laws Worldwide](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/ai-laws-worldwide)
- Contrast with: [Contestability](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/contestability)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-recourse

## Sources

[1] "Actionable Recourse in Linear Classification" (Ustun, Spangher and Liu; recourse as the ability to change a model's decision by altering actionable inputs; arXiv 1809.06514). arXiv. 2018-09-18. https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06514 (verified: primary)