Future-oriented policy instrument choice for national technology development: A Delphi survey approach for advanced energy technology fields

The new round of scientific and industrial revolution has brought both opportunities and challenges for national technological development. To grasp the opportunities, we highlight that policymakers should consider the choice of policies from the foresight perspective of future-oriented long-term technological development, rather than focusing only on a backward-looking view. The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical framework for future-oriented policy instrument choice. In particular, we adopt a large-scale Delphi survey method with more than 300 experts participating and focus on advanced energy technology fields in China. As a result, the analytical framework is developed considering the diverse effects of policies on different technology fields and on different stages of technological development. Based on the analysis of the impact of four types of policy instruments on different stages of the technological development of nine advanced technology fields (including 91 subtechnologies) in energy fields, the empirical results show that the policy instrument of research and development (R&D) investment is the main factor that affects the development of all nine advanced technologies in energy fields in China. The four types of policy instruments play various roles in three stages of technological development and in nine advanced technology fields. Based on our findings, we propose policy recommendations. Specifically, policy instruments should be dynamically adjusted based on the stage of technological development within different advanced energy fields. • We investigate the future-oriented policy instrument choices for China's national technology foresight practice. • We develop an analytical framework to analyze the choice of energy policy based on three dimensions. • We make contribution by opening the process of technological development into three development stages. • We contribute to the research on the choice of policy instruments with a future-oriented focus.