USING BIODIVERSITY DATA FOR BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY: A GLOBAL CORPORATE SITE BIODIVERSITY INDEX (CSBI) AND BIODIVERSITY-CENTRIC B2B MARKETING FRAMEWORK

Teck Ming Tan1  and  Jaideep Prabhu2
1 Oulu Business School, University of Oulu, Finland  |  [email protected]
2 Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK  |  [email protected]
World Biodiversity Forum 2026  |  Davos, Switzerland  |  14-19 June  |  Session FIN13  |  WBF2026-540

1Background & Motivation

Biodiversity loss poses profound ethical questions for business, yet B2B marketing scholarship has largely overlooked it. Grounded in Resource-Advantage theory (Hunt, 2015), we develop an ethical architecture for biodiversity-centric B2B marketing and introduce "trust in systemic change" — stakeholders' confidence in firms' commitment to nature-positive transformation. Using 4,142 pharmaceutical sites across 40+ countries, we present a Global Corporate Site Biodiversity Index (CSBI) demonstrating how open-access biodiversity data serves as a strategic enabler aligned with compliance frameworks.

2Ethical Architecture of Biodiversity-Centric B2B Marketing

The framework bridges ecological accountability and stakeholder perception, establishing how measurable site-level biodiversity action translates into societal trust through verifiable, data-driven evidence of nature-positive performance.

3Corporate Site Biodiversity Index (CSBI)

The CSBI integrates environmental and biodiversity data into a single site-level metric, standardised from 0.01 to 99.99:

CSBI = 70% Environmental Foundation + 30% Biodiversity Outcomes

Part A (70%) — 7 indicators: Water Availability, Water Condition, Air Condition, Wildfire Hazard, Plant/Forest/Aquatic Pests & Diseases, Land/Freshwater/Sea Use Change, and Pollution.

Part B (30%) — 2 indicators: Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII 2020) and Bioclimatic Ecosystem Resilience Index (BERI 2020).

Elite (65+)
Strong (55-64)
Moderate (40-54)
Poor (<40)

4Key Empirical Finding

CSBI  →  Reputational Capital
β = .46
t = 31.27  |  p < .001

CSBI significantly predicts site-level reputational capital (β = .46, t = 31.27, p < .001), demonstrating that biodiversity-related intangible resources — trust, ethics, and sustainability legitimacy — translate into competitive advantage through verifiable, data-driven evidence of nature-positive performance.

5BioDivIQ Platform & Implications

BioDivIQ is a science-based platform using open-access ecological datasets to deliver biodiversity insights and CSBI scores across sites.

Practical implications:

A. Diagnose portfolio positioning on the defensive-to-proactive continuum

B. Interrogate greenwashing via the 4-matrix framework of corporate sustainability

C. Enable verifiable biodiversity claims through open data

D. Embed nature into capital allocation via biodiversity-linked financial instruments and digital asset innovation