The integrated management of municipal solid waste mainly refers to the selection of appropriate plans, policy tools, etc. to achieve specific management goals. Appropriate research methods serve as an important foundation and ensure scientific decision-making in municipal solid waste management. This paper reviews the related research methods commonly used in this field in recent years as well as the research progress, summarizes and analyzes the applicable scenarios, advantages and disadvantages, and research progress of the conventional mathematical model methods represented by statistical analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis, full life cycle analysis, cost-benefit analysis, etc., and the complex system simulation methods represented by system dynamics and agent-based modeling, etc. The future research trends in this field and the directions are analyzed. The study found that traditional mathematical model methods were widely used in the field of municipal solid waste management and became an important research tool to support decision-making. However, most of these methods usually only take a single subject as the research object, and cannot explain the effects of various factors on other subjects and the entire domestic waste management system. Further, these methods, most of which are static, analyze a single or several time spans, but downplays the system and the nonlinear relationship between the subjects in the system, the interaction of behavior, and the dynamic changes along with time and space. Future researches need to pay full attention to the complexity of the municipal solid waste management system and the behavioral interaction between different subjects of the system, strengthen the development of system simulation models, carry out systematic policy evaluation and analysis, etc., to provide support for the decision-making of refined management of municipal solid waste.