Market shaping visioning and competing frames: Influencing the future of clean hydrogen

Abstract

In capital-intensive and uncertain sectors like clean energy, governments are often viewed as initial market drivers, providing the necessary support for new technologies and infrastructure to stimulate change. Little is known about how firms and other stakeholders influence the market driver's role and activities in early-market formation. Drawing on a market shaping perspective, this study explores how actor visioning draws on competing frames to influence market shaping at the ‘fuzzy front-end’. We present a case study of the Australian clean hydrogen context, based on interviews with thirty-eight stakeholders and eighty-three policy and industry documents. We identify four key visioning contest areas which influence market shaping: developmental pace, resource allocation, market scope and governing purpose, each aligned with different sets of competing frames drawn upon by participants. Our findings make three contributions by conceptualising visioning as a distributed multi-actor process in market shaping; identifying how visioning leverages distinct, yet overlapping competing frames; and uncovering the discursive micro-foundations of market shaping to legitimise and promote preferred market configurations.