Analysis of Darknet Market Activity as a Country-Specific, Socio-Economic and Technological Phenomenon

The technological peculiarities of the Darknet as well as the availability of illicit items on the embedded marketplaces have raised heated debates in the media and keen interest by law enforcement and academics. In prior work, researchers have already investigated the infrastructure of Darknet platforms and the global distribution of Darknet market activity. In our work, we take a broader perspective by studying the Darknet as a regional, socio-economic and technological phenomenon. Our starting assumption is that there exist cross-country indicators that are related to Darknet market activity. We identify relevant indicators, and discuss their relationship to cybercrime from a theoretical perspective. We apply regression modelling and conduct a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to study the impact of the identified indicators on the number of items offered on the Darknet. We find that GDP per capita, the number of Bitcoin downloads per capita, the number of Tor relay users per capita and an education index correlate with market activity on Darknet platforms.