Analyzing determinants for promoting emerging technology through intermediaries by using a DANP-based MCDA framework

Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) has been widely considered a useful tool for evaluating decision making. Several derivatives of MCDA, including AHP, ANP, DANP, have been implemented in previous studies to construct real-world applications. However, literature combining a systematic introduction on methodological developments of MCDA with an empirical implementation in promoting technology through intermediaries is still rare. To fill in this gap, this paper begins with introducing the methodological development of MCDA to set out an analytical framework, namely DANP for the empirical analysis. Consequently, this paper applied DANP to analyze multiple determinants and five dimensions that we summarized from existing literature to find out the key determinants and the interdependent relationship for promoting the emerging sector through institutional intermediaries. While conducting empirical implementation, 33 experts from major intermediaries involved in promoting the biotechnology sector were visited. 7 out of 33 of these experts were further visited for interview to verify our analysis. Based on our MCDA analysis, we found that government policies and regulations are the most influential determinates while promoting emerging sectors through intermediaries. This paper contributes to the literature in several ways including highlighting methodological improvements of DANP, improving approaches on empirical data collection, and implementing an empirical MCDA analysis by applying an influential network relation map (INRM) to construct useful policy suggestions for real-world applications.