Citation

Dimas GL, Konrad RA, Lee Maass K, Trapp AC. PLoS One 2022; 17(8): e0273708.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0273708

PMID

36037198

Abstract

Human trafficking is a widespread and compound social, economic, and human rights issue occurring in every region of the world. While there have been an increasing number of anti-human trafficking studies from the Operations Research and Analytics domains in recent years, no systematic review of this literature currently exists. We fill this gap by providing a systematic literature review that identifies and classifies the body of Operations Research and Analytics research related to the anti-human trafficking domain, thereby illustrating the collective impact of the field to date. We classify 142 studies to identify current trends in methodologies, theoretical approaches, data sources, trafficking contexts, target regions, victim-survivor demographics, and focus within the well-established 4Ps principles. Using these findings, we discuss the extent to which the current literature aligns with the global demographics of human trafficking and identify existing research gaps to propose an agenda for Operations Research and Analytics researchers.

Language: en