title: How central are clients in sexual networks created by commercial sex?
abstract: Sex workers are traditionally considered important vectors of transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STI). The role of clients is commonly overlooked, partially due to the lack of evidence on clients' position in the sexual network created by commercial sex. Contrasting the diffusion importance of sex workers and their clients in the map of their sexual encounters in twoWeb-mediated communities, we find that from diffusion perspective, clients are as important as sex workers. Their diffusion importance is closely linked to the geography of the sexual encounters: as a result of different movement patterns, travelling clients shorten network distances between distant network neighborhoods and thus facilitate contagion among them more than sex workers, and find themselves more often in the core of the network by which they could contribute to the persistence of STIs in the community. These findings position clients into the set of the key actors and highlight the role of human mobility in the transmission of STIs in commercial sexual networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Chih-Sheng
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Economics I &Bridge, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) [2] CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University in Prague and the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Jaromír
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kovářík
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Ohio State University.
authors.forename: Trevon
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Logan
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D011477:Sex Work; D060386:Sex Workers; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000635:transmission*