Illicit supply networks (ISNs), which “source, transit, and distribute illicitly traded goods” (Magliocca et al., 2021), are exceedingly adaptable and impactful, yielding damaging social, financial, and ecological repercussions on an individual, firm, and global scale. ISNs have become increasingly complex by using more advanced technologies and capitalizing on global uncertainty brought about by pandemics and political conflict. Acknowledging the complexity which increases the difficulty of detection and prediction, this three-essay dissertation strives to develop a holistic approach to understand how: (1) supply chain actors play various roles in the perpetuation or inhibition of illicit supply network operations, and (2) the factors which predispose ISNs to detection and theoretical interdiction.In the first essay, I employ a scenario-based role-playing experiment to capture consumer perceptions and consequent purchase intentions within the context of illicit wildlife trade. This research reveals a significant relationship between the communication of species illegality with consumer guilt as well as a mediating effect of consumer guilt on reducing future repurchase intentions. However, a moderating effect of health condition criticality (i.e., critical or non-critical) nor the derivation of the species (i.e., plant or animal) exhibited a significant moderating effect.In the second essay, I leverage secondary data from the DEA’s ARCOS the CDC's WONDER database to investigate the relationship between the oversupply of opioids and overdose rates by county. Additionally, I consider the potential moderating effect of measures related to socioeconomic status: educational attainment and unemployment rate by leveraging the USDA's Economic Research Service and U.S. BLS's Local Area Unemployment Statistics, respectively. Relatedly, I explore the potential moderating effects by the presence of high-injury (i.e., extractive) industries as well as pharmacies and drug stores with the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns datasets. The results of this research demonstrate a significant direct effect of both opioid distribution and the presence of pharmacies and drug stores, as well as a moderating effect of both measures of socioeconomic status and the presence of extractive industries on elevated rates of fatal overdose.In the third essay, I utilize fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the specific elements which predispose illicit wildlife supply chains to a higher prospect of detection. In employing this methodology, this research discovers two solutions, or configurations of conditions, which result in high detectability. Both solutions exhibit the presence of measures with high scores of product and stakeholder recognizability, while the second solution also involves high scores on transportation related measures.
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