Assessment of the Impact of Human Factors on Decision-Making in Port Logistics: A Regression-Based Analysis

As port terminals evolve into automated and complex systems, understanding the role of Human Factors (HF) in operational decision-making becomes essential. This study evaluates how distinct categories of HF—learning ability, psychosocial aspects, physical and ergonomic aspects, cognitive factors and worker performance—individually influence three key managerial decisions in port logistics: maintenance programming, storage management, and truck scheduling. A structured questionnaire based on HF literature was applied to port managers in South America, and the data were analyzed using a regression-based analysis. The results reveal that ergonomic and physical workload factors are significantly associated with maintenance decisions, while learning ability plays a central role in both storage and scheduling processes. These findings highlight the need to align smart port strategies with human-centric principles, considering workers’ cognitive and physical constraints. The study contributes to literature by offering a quantitative approach to human-centric logistics and proposes directions for integrating HF insights into decision support systems and simulation-based planning tools.