Internet financial reporting: The effects of information presentation format and content differences on investor decision making

Internet financial reporting provides investors with several options regarding which type of financial disclosures to view and the format in which to view these. However, research suggests that these options may result in unintended cognitive effects leading to less optimal decision making. Accordingly, this study examines the individual and joint impact of presentation format and information content on nonprofessional investors’ decision making within the Internet financial reporting environment. Alternative presentation formats which vary in their navigational flexibility are studied to isolate the effects attributable to each format. Specifically, hyperlinked financial information is compared to paper-based financial information. The effects of information content differences are also examined by investigating whether an unaudited letter from a company’s management differentially affects hyperlink and paper users’ investment judgments.We conduct an experiment in which graduate business students, proxies for nonprofessional investors, make financial investment-related judgments and decisions. Our results show that hyperlink users used less effort on the investment task than users of paper-based information. Furthermore, the management letter influenced the paper-based users’ forward-looking judgments more so than the hyperlink users. The findings have implications for academic research, financial disclosure regulation and information systems design.

► We examine investor decision making in the Internet financial reporting context.
► We investigate differences in presentation format and information content.
► Hyperlink users use less effort than users of paper-based information.
► Hyperlink users integrate less information into their judgments than paper users.