Human Readiness for Sustainable Digital Transformation in Industrial Regions: A Fuzzy-Based Assessment of Behavioural Readiness Using Situational Judgement Tests from the Copper Basin

Abstract

Sustainable digital transformation increasingly depends not only on technological infrastructure but also on the behavioural readiness of individuals to function effectively in dynamic and digitally transformed work environments. This study examines behavioural readiness among young people at different stages of education in the Copper Basin, a highly industrialised region undergoing intensive technological transformation.

The study involved 2,118 respondents representing upper-secondary and university education. Behavioural readiness was assessed using Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs) covering five domains: communication, teamwork, adaptability to change, emotional regulation, and conflict resolution. Based on expert content analysis and fuzzy logic modelling, the Human Digital Sustainability Index (HDSI) was developed as an exploratory fuzzy-based indicator providing a synthetic representation of behavioural readiness within the analysed sample.

The results indicate a mean HDSI value of 0.741 (SD = 0.047), with substantial differences observed across individual domains. Adaptability to change showed the highest mean fuzzy score, followed by conflict resolution and teamwork, whereas communication showed the lowest mean score within the adopted HDSI framework. The findings also reveal that similar overall HDSI levels may be associated with different configurations of behavioural readiness across domains.

The study contributes to research on the human dimension of sustainable digital transformation by proposing an exploratory framework for analysing behavioural responses to changing work environments. The findings highlight the importance of examining not only overall readiness but also its internal behavioural structure. Further psychometric and cross-context validation of the HDSI is required before the index can be interpreted as a standardised measure of behavioural readiness.