A Survey-based Study on Institutionalizing Sustainability Literacy in Digital Social Innovation as a Socio-Technical Strategy: From Digital Platforms to Learning Ecosystems

Abstract

Transforming individual knowledge into collective, institutionalized action remains a persistent challenge in sustainability governance. Although Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is widely invoked as a bridge across this gap, its function as a structured socio-technical learning strategy, rather than a digital platform initiative, remains theoretically underdeveloped and, in developing-economy contexts, empirically underexplored. This study reframes DSI as a leadership-enacted learning mechanism and examines the individual-level conditions under which it institutionalizes sustainability literacy among young social innovation practitioners. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory, social learning theory, and institutional theory, the study models DSI Learning Strategy as the mediating mechanism linking three leadership antecedents: Social Mission, Innovation Design, and Social Impact Focus, to Sustainability Literacy, reconceived as an emergent institutional capability. Cross-sectional survey data from 202 active young practitioners in Indonesian social innovation incubators were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000-subsample bootstrapping. Social Mission (β = 0.450, p < 0.001) and Innovation Design (β = 0.199, p < 0.05) significantly predicted DSI Learning Strategy, whereas Social Impact Focus did not (β = 0.203, p = 0.072), a result attributable to construct collinearity rather than theoretical irrelevance. DSI Learning Strategy, in turn, exerted a strong effect on Sustainability Literacy (β = 0.832, p < 0.001), accounting for 69.2% of its variance, and significantly mediated the effects of Social Mission and Innovation Design on literacy. Governance Environment and Social Environment did not meet convergent-validity thresholds and are interpreted as distal institutional conditions rather than proximate individual-level predictors. These findings position DSI as an institutionalizing mechanism for sustainability literacy when driven by mission clarity and intentional innovation design, and contribute an empirically grounded, individual-level perspective that DSI scholarship has largely overlooked. Implications are drawn for incubator designers, social innovation facilitators, and sustainability policymakers in rapidly digitalizing developing economies.