The relationship between integrated reporting assurance and investment decision-making

Abstract

Integrated reporting has received much recognition in the last decade, with many companies, mandated or not, having adopted it and made it the current frontier in corporate reporting. Integrated reporting has become of value for investment decision making. Consequently, the need for integrated reports (IRs) to be deemed credible and reliable has also increased which has intensified the importance placed on the assurance of IRs. The study aimed to investigate the relationship between integrated reporting assurance and investment decision-making. Thus, the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable was investigated. The study used a sample of 100 companies that have a public listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) over a three-year period (2018, 2019 and 2020) to collect the secondary data used to measure the variables. The reason for choosing JSE listed companies and this period was motivated by the fact that JSE-listed companies had been publishing integrated reports since 2010 as well as the expectation that the companies are likely to have adopted the practice of assuring their IRs because they have the resources. A purposive non-probability sampling technique was applied in this study to choose a manageable sample intended to achieve a fair distribution of companies in the various industries. Using a multiple regression approach to analyse the data, the findings of this study displayed an increase in companies assuring their integrated reports and confirm a positive relationship between integrated reporting assurance and investment decision-making.