Critical mineral development involves not only resource availability but also policy coordination and governance challenges across the supply chain.This study examines how stakeholders' policy perceptions shape the demand for a coordination body in domestic critical mineral development in Korea.Using survey data from 515 respondents representing various segments of the critical mineral value chain and related policy communities, the study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the structural relationships among key perception variables.The results indicate that perceptions of the necessity of domestic development and recognition of structural problems in the current system significantly strengthen perceptions of the need for policy and institutional reform.These policy perceptions, in turn, increase support for government policy measures and supply-chain strategies, including international cooperation and domestic capability building.Both factors significantly increase the perceived need for a coordination body to align policy instruments and value-chain strategies.Additional robustness analysis shows that preferences regarding the actor responsible for project implementation do not directly influence this governance demand.By conceptualizing policy perception as a sequential and structural process -spanning problem diagnosis, institutional reform demands, policy instrument preferences, and governance needs -this study advances beyond approaches that treat policy perceptions as parallel, independent attitude variables.These findings suggest that a coordination body is demanded primarily as an institutional mechanism to integrate policy instruments and supply-chain strategies rather than as a reflection of actor preferences in critical mineral development.
Lee et al. (Tue,) studied this question.