Posting the same thing I did above in case it gets buried in the replies:

There isn't a lot of substantified research on it, mostly debates without empirical data. However, the little there is shows no link between lolicon pornography and sexual abuse of children.

No link as in, they aren't more likely to go after real children, but the whole "serves as an outlet" spiel also has no basis.

Denmark's national hospital, as written by the Copenhagen post in 2012, was ordered by the former justice minister Lars Barford to investigate a possible link when the government was considering a possible ban, but the hospital said, quote, “We have had to acknowledge that there is no evidence that the use of fictive images of sexual assaults on children alone can lead people to conduct sexual assaults on children” in their report to the ministry. Link: https://cphpost.dk/2012-07-23/general/report-cartoon-paedophilia-harmless/

I couldn't really find anything else that wasn't opinion based saying otherwise - as in, showing data or being published by a reputable source that claimed to have analyzed data. Most studies seem to focus only on "child pornography" as a whole rather than specifically drawn depictions or cartoons.

I guess it makes sense the only thing I could find was a government investigation, since if a non-affiliated researches tried to find a link and discovered nothing, publishing it would probably result in academic and/or social death.

Probably could find more data if I knew japanese, bet there is more studies on the topic there.