Digital ESG Disclosure, Environmental Benchmarking, and Greenwashing Risk in Building Construction: Empirical Evidence from Bulgaria

This study analyzes the relationship between digital disclosure of information on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors, publicly verifiable environmental evidence, corporate responsibility, trust, and greenwashing risk in building construction in Bulgaria. The article applies a combined research design that integrates the Environmental Benchmarking Index for Building Construction Companies (EBI-C41), calculated at the company level for 12 construction companies, with a survey of 297 informed respondents. The results show that EBI-C41 has consistent positive associations with transparency, corporate responsibility, and trust, as well as a negative association with greenwashing risk. On this basis, the findings suggest that, in building construction, verifiable sustainability evidence is important for trust-related stakeholder evaluations and provides information beyond ESG communication visibility alone. Diagnostic indices are also proposed to assess the gap between communication, evidence, and trust. The results should be interpreted as exploratory associations within a purposive and non-representative sample, rather than as evidence of causal relationships or as an assessment of the full internal environmental performance of companies in the sector.