This study explores evidence-based policymaking (EBP) in public research and development (R&D) programmes. Governments develop and implement R&D programmes to promote innovation, the key driver of sustainable economic growth. For effective management, public policies should be planned, executed, and terminated based on their impact evaluation and feedback. Although many studies have investigated the impact of R&D support, few have analysed whether it evolves on the basis of evidence. Using a dataset of Korean programmes, this study adopted the propensity score matching with a difference-in-differences method. We distinguished four determinants of performance evidence: R&D intensity, assets, sales, and profits growth. The following are the main results: (1) while R&D intensity, sales, and profits growth reveal the efficiency of the EBP mechanism, the performance of assets do not differ across the abolished and continued programmes; (2) the EBP process classified by subsidy amount reveals no statistically significant differences in terms of R&D intensity and profits. This suggests that policymakers need to consider the amount of subsidy granted under the budget limitation. This study contributes to the empirical research on EBP using heterogeneous evidence indicators and describes how policymakers exploit policy evaluation to implement and monitor policies for sustainable development.