Path dependence or path creation? Evolution and influencing factors of future industry investment networks in China from 2012 to 2024

Abstract Future industries represent a strategic commanding height in the new round of global scientific and technological revolution. The spatial evolutionary patterns of their investment networks have emerged as a frontier topic in economic geography. Based on investment data from future industry enterprises in China during 2012–2024, this study constructs an inter-city future industry investment network (FIIN) covering six sub-sectors, namely future manufacturing (FMF), future energy (FE), future information (FI), future materials (FM), future space (FS), and future health (FH). The evolution and influencing factors of FIIN in China are analyzed through methods including dominant flow analysis, social network analysis, and geographically weighted random forest. The results show that the major nodes of FIIN have undergone a transition involving agglomeration from resource-based cities toward innovation-oriented core cities. New first-tier cities have gradually grown into secondary core nodes. The node patterns of the six sub-sectors exhibit differentiated features jointly associated with technological attributes, factor endowments, and policy orientations. The dominant flows of FIIN have evolved from spatial dispersion toward core concentration and from unipolar dominance toward multipolar coordination. Long-distance backbone linkages across city clusters and regions have become increasingly dense. FIIN has evolved from an early-stage form characterized by dispersion and isolation into a mature network featuring close connectivity, efficient transmission, and local coordination. The influencing factors of FIIN have undergone a fundamental shift in the spatial importance structure from demand-side predictors toward technology supply-side predictors. The predictive importance of technological supply capacity has continuously strengthened, policy support has risen to rank among the top predictors, and natural geographical factors have systematically receded to the bottom of the ranking. These insights provide evidence consistent with path creation in FIIN and provide a reference for formulating strategies to develop frontier industries.