Environmental effects are believed to play an important yet poorly understood role in triggering accretion events onto the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of galaxies (active galactic nuclei; AGNs). Massive clusters, which represent the densest structures in the Universe, provide an excellent laboratory to isolate environmental effects and study their impact on black hole growth. In this work, we critically review observational evidence for the preferential activation of SMBHs in the outskirts of galaxy clusters. We develop a semi-empirical model under the assumption that the incidence of AGN in galaxies is independent of environment. We demonstrate that the model is broadly consistent with recent observations on the AGN halo occupation at z =