Keywords: Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), Sustainability, Real Estate Investments, Innovation Campus, Campus Tenants, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria are becoming increasingly more important in
sustainable real estate development, yet a standardized stakeholder-sensitive approach remains absent,
specifically in the context of innovation campuses. This study addresses this gap by developing a decisionsupport tool that assists real estate developers in aligning ESG strategies with stakeholder priorities,
particularly those of tenants and investors. Through a Design-Thinking methodology, a design cycle
gets adopted that includes expert interviews, stakeholder surveys, and the application of the Analytical
Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Constant Sum Scaling—stakeholder-specific weights to ESG criteria were
established. Findings indicate that tenants prioritize social (S) criteria such as community and wellbeing,
while investors prioritize more environmental (E) and governance (G) criteria like CO2-reduction and
climate adaptation. These insights were incorporated into the prototype-phase of the design cycle, which
is an Excel-based ESG scoring tool that offers a separate scorecard model tailored to each stakeholder
group. The tool was validated in a testing-phase with three real estate developers. It was confirmed
that the tool provides practical benefits such as in-depth ESG reporting, strategic planning, and markettargeted marketing. Despite limitations regarding a small sample size of the collected data and potential
bias in stakeholder understanding, the research contributes to the field with a market-based framework to
the ESG discourse, particularly within the underexplored context of innovation campuses. Recommendations and directions for future research include extended stakeholder inclusion, integration of existing
certification frameworks, and frequent updating of ESG weights to reflect evolving market standpoints.
Smits_Rebecca_1412930_Arentze_and_Tuncer_MSc_thesis.pdf