The Effect of Released Information on Searching for Missing Children: The Case of the Baby Back Home Network

The problem of missing children draws much attention of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations in China due to huge numbers of the missing children. According to the records of Baby Back Home network (BBHNet), a professional website to search missing children in China, 1,666 missing children have been found via releasing information on BBHNet; however, there are still 30,561 families searching for their children and 24,603 missing children are searching for biological parents through this website and have not succeeded yet. What is the difference between successful and unsuccessful cases in the aspect of released information? Motivated by this question, our research proposes to determine the crucial information in the process of searching missing children. A logistic regression model was developed on the data summarized from 500 succeed cases and 500 cases which have not succeed yet from BBHNet for forecasting success rate of searching missing children. The model identifies that the differences in terms of released information, number of children, address, and natural geographical features are the three most crucial factors that cause differences in the result of searching. This research can be used as a guide for improving the success rate of searching missing children and provide reference for developing a missing children information-sharing platform.