Integrated Reporting Quality: An Analysis of Key Determinants

Despite the expected benefits to stakeholders, as well as the number of contributes aiming at identifying and proposing best practices on the integrated reporting (IR) adoption, it seems that the IR struggles to be diffused in companies. Several are the reasons explaining this evidence. It could mainly be the consequence of some critical issues underlying IR implementation, such as difficulties in the complete application of the IR framework. Strictly related to this last aspect is the topic of the IR quality that recently has begun to gain interest both in the literature and in the empirical research. Particularly, the issues of IR quality and its determinants now appear to be more important than the IR quantity. Starting from these premises, this chapter aims to identify the determinants of IR quality. The authors have identified main drivers of IR quality, considering previous studies on voluntary disclosure and in particular on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability disclosure while with reference to the quality assessment of IR, the authors have used the Integrated Reporting Scoreboard, recently proposed in the literature. After developing the research hypothesis, an empirical analysis has been carried out on a sample of IRs issued by 55 companies in a three-year period. The main research results highlight, on the one hand, that the main determinants of IR quality are the country where the company operates, in particular European ones and mandatory IR countries; on the other hand, industry and firm’s size don’t seem to have a positive impact on IR quality.