Greenwashing: what the science shows. Where do the different biodiversity assessment logics sit?

Introduction

Research published in 2025 provides a structuring insight into the mechanisms associated with greenwashing in real estate. The study "What drives stock market reactions to greenwashing? An event study of European companies" (Finance Research Letters, 2025) analyses 296 European cases and shows that contested situations rest mainly on non-verifiable information, high information asymmetry, and strong reliance on documents produced by the operator. These findings extend the mechanisms described in "Exaggerating, distracting, or window-dressing? An empirical study on firm greenwashing recognition" (Yuan, Xu & Shang, 2024) and in "Greenwashing and market value of firms: An empirical study" (Xu et al., 2025), which converge on the same conclusion: essentially descriptive arrangements are objectively more exposed to the risk of a weak or ambiguous signal.

These studies do not assess existing tools, but they describe two clear methodological configurations: approaches based on project description, dependent on operator declarations; and approaches based on independent, reproducible and verifiable evidence. This distinction helps to illuminate, without comparing them, the assessment logics currently used in real estate and development.

1. The scientific finding: information asymmetry as the central factor

The study of 296 greenwashing cases shows that claim risks emerge above all when:

• environmental information passes through documents produced by the operator;
• the assessment rests on a qualitative description or a narrative framing of the project;
• the criteria used are not reproducible by a third party;
• the evidence depends on unmeasured or non-falsifiable elements.

These configurations create what researchers call information asymmetry, a mechanism that increases the likelihood of criticism or public challenge. The logic is not moral: it is structural.

2. A first family of tools: the descriptive approach

International work describes a first category of environmental arrangements characterised by:

• an assessment fed by documents, plans or photos provided by the project owner;
• criteria relating to quality of use, comfort, presentation or perceived value of the project;
• the absence of a standardised protocol for collecting evidence;
• a significant dependence on expert interpretation;
• adjustable weightings to adapt to the diversity of projects.

These methods play a useful role in enhancing and understanding a project's intentions. But, from the standpoint of the academic literature, they share several traits with the greenwashing cases studied: not because they are at fault, but because they leave a high interpretative latitude, identified in the literature as a potential source of uncertainty.

3. A second family of tools: the evidence-based normative approach

The literature distinguishes another category, structured around:

• reproducible ecological measurements;
• inventories conducted with defined protocols;
• non-modifiable thresholds, identical from one project to the next;
• falsifiable indicators (soils, pressures, continuities, cohabitations, dynamics);
• assessment by an independent third party in the sense of international standards.

These features align with recognised conformity frameworks (including the ISO principles for independent assessment). The literature shows that these approaches reduce information asymmetry, because performance no longer depends on the narrative but on verifiable data.

Effinature belongs to this second family.

Not by commercial positioning, but by methodological structure:

• certification on evidence only;
• measurable ecological indicators;
• independence guaranteed by an accredited body.

4. Putting it in perspective for project owners

The scientific analysis offers a simple reading framework. The tools available today fall along two axes:

1. Descriptive axis: strong project enhancement, use-based logic, evidence supplied by the operator, central role of interpretation.
2. Normative axis: measured requirements, reproducibility, neutrality of the assessor, independent certification structure.

Neither axis is "good" or "bad". They serve different uses: one informs design, the other secures environmental performance.

But the literature shows that media or financial greenwashing allegations occur almost exclusively in the first configuration, where uncertainty is high. Hence the value, for a project owner wishing to reduce exposure to risk, of favouring methodological frameworks in which the evidence is independent.

Conclusion

Recent research allows a calmer reading: some approaches rely on narrative, mandated expertise and project documentation; others on measurement, falsifiability and independence. Effinature sits within this second logic.

The point is not to compare tools, but to apply the lessons of the literature: the more evidence is objectified, the lower the exposure to greenwashing. That is the line that clearly emerges from the 2025 publications, and it is the one IRICE has chosen to follow.