Abstract  Herbivorous insects use intraspecific semio-chemicals for courtship and mating whereas plants can produce direct and indirect chemical defenses after detecting the damage caused by insect pests. Herbivorous insects can also use these defensive chemicals produced by plants to identify hosts. Tea is a perennial, evergreen, woody, cash crop that is adversely affected by disease and insect pests throughout the year. The economic losses to tea production caused by diseases and pest insects are as high as 20%-50% per annum, which seriously hinders the development of a sustainable and environmentally-friendly tea industry. In the past 20 years, researchers have carried out systematic research on the main semio-chemicals, their modes of action and the mechanisms that regulate the behavior and population dynamics of tea pest insects. This paper mainly reviews current progress in the identification and utilization of tea pest insects' sex pheromones, the role of host and non-host plants in the regulation of pest insect populations, and discusses prospects for the ecological regulation of insect tea pests using pheromones.