Psychological Readiness and Training Transfer for Sustainable Tourism Digitalisation: A Framework for Responsible Digital Practice

ABSTRACT

This review article examines the conditions under which digital training becomes responsible digital practice within sustainable tourism digitalisation, understood as competent information-system use combined with reasoned challenge, correction and workplace decision-making. It uses theory synthesis to examine a bounded, purposively expanded corpus of 66 sources, including targeted educational sampling on problem-based and contextual learning, scaffolding, formative assessment, learning analytics and vocational learning. The model separates change-specific readiness before training from learning engagement, acquired competence, later transfer and collective routine formation. Six propositions specify cross-level leadership effects, readiness before and after learning, psychological safety, an opportunity-to-perform threshold and governance as a necessary but insufficient condition for sustainability outcomes. Seasonal and shift discontinuity remain tourism-specific boundary conditions, while visible correction after debriefing is treated as a feedback pathway requiring further evidence. READI organises the educational implications as Relate, Establish, Apply, Debrief and Iterate and is positioned as a pedagogical design heuristic rather than a validated intervention. The analysis suggests that contextualised practice, scaffolding, supervisory support and formative feedback are insufficient unless working conditions permit application, challenge and correction in digital work systems. Longitudinal, mixed-methods, multilevel research is required to test the proposed relationships and distinguish learning engagement, acquired competence, transfer, and demonstrable sustainability outcomes.