Supporting Sustainability Investment Decisions
Bridging ESG Frameworks and Capital Allocation in Superyacht Shipyards
M.D. de Boer (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)
J.F.J. Pruyn – Mentor (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)
J.M. Vleugel – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
A. Napoleone – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)
Charlotte van de Kerk – Graduation committee member (Koninklijke de Vries Scheepsbouw)
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Abstract
The gap between sustainability reporting and capital allocation in capital-intensive, project-based industries is commonly diagnosed as a measurement problem. This paper argues that, for yard-level investment decisions in custom superyacht shipbuilding, it is instead a decision-logic problem. Reporting standards produce backward-looking information for external accountability. Investment choice instead requires forward-looking deliberation under deep uncertainty about regulation, legitimacy, and client expectations. Existing valuation, indicator-based, and multi-criteria approaches each address part of this problem but none is sufficient alone. The paper develops a modular non-probabilistic framework with four components. A European Sustainability Reporting Standards-grounded indicator basis and a System Dynamics Representation handle indirect and feedback-mediated consequences. AHP-weighted Multi-Attribute Value Theory aggregates non-monetised value, and minimax regret across bounded scenarios supports cross-context comparison. Monte Carlo perturbation of elicited inputs tests framework robustness. The framework is applied to four investments at a custom superyacht shipyard, selected to span scale, impact pathway, and scenario sensitivity. The application demonstrates three results. First, baseline-attractive and robustness-attractive investments diverge. A large strategic investment wins under additive aggregation but carries the highest maximum regret, while a small governance investment minimises regret across scenarios. Second, the System Dynamics Representation surfaces legitimacy and governance pathways that direct expert assessment systematically overlooks. Third, sensitivity concentrates in the consequence layer rather than the valuation layer, locating productive disagreement in empirical rather than normative questions. The framework does not eliminate uncertainty. It disciplines deliberation by making assumptions, trade-offs, and points of disagreement explicit and contestable.