Sustainable digital transformation and business competitiveness in emerging-economy organizations: the moderating role of economic sector and organizational age in Piura, Peru

Background Sustainable digital transformation is increasingly treated as a strategic lever for business competitiveness, but evidence on the organizational conditions under which it pays off in emerging economies is still limited. This study estimated the direct effect of sustainable digital transformation on business competitiveness and tested whether economic sector and organizational age moderate that effect, separately and jointly. Methods We applied a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design to 361 formally registered organizations in the Piura region of Peru, drawn from the commerce, services, manufacturing, agro-industry, and construction sectors. A 30-item questionnaire measured sustainable digital transformation (15 items across its economic, social, and environmental dimensions) and business competitiveness (15 items across operational efficiency, innovation capacity, and market positioning). Content validity was established through expert judgment (Aiken’s V between 0.81 and 0.97). The measurement model was evaluated with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis under maximum likelihood, and hypotheses were tested with hierarchical regression (Hayes’ Model 3) using HC3 robust standard errors and 10,000 bootstrap resamples. Results Sustainable digital transformation had a positive and significant direct effect on business competitiveness (β = 0.657; p < 0.001; R² = 0.432 in the baseline model; b = 0.660 in the full moderation model). The six-dimension measurement model showed adequate fit (CFI = 0.950; RMSEA = 0.047) and discriminant validity (all HTMT ≤ 0.754). Neither economic sector (p = 0.816) nor organizational age (p = 0.691) moderated the effect on its own, but their joint moderation was significant (robust Wald F(4,341) = 3.12; p = 0.015). The conditional effect was concentrated in manufacturing, where the competitive return on digitalization weakened with firm age and lost significance after roughly eleven years of operation. Conclusions Sustainable digital transformation is a strong predictor of business competitiveness in this emerging-economy setting, but its returns depend on the combination of economic sector and organizational maturity. Digitalization strategies should therefore be differentiated by context rather than applied uniformly.