Determinants of Voluntary Dissemination of Financial Data at Corporate Web Sites

We hypothesize that this variation in the extent and nature of financial data disseminated through corporate Web sites is associated with the factors that influence the initial disclosure of financial information. We consider information items that contain required disclosures separately from those that contain mainly voluntary disclosures, since most previous work that identifies factors affecting financial disclosures have focused on discretionary information. To test our hypotheses, we employ a sample of companies rated by the AIMR. We use the AIMR’s disclosure quality rating as an independent variable to investigate whether companies have disclosure profiles that carry over to their Web dissemination practices. Our results confirm that they do, although mainly with respect to the presentation of voluntarily produced financial data. Consistent with extant literature on voluntary disclosure, our evidence suggests that firms develop a Web-based dissemination policy based on their size, need to access the capital markets, need to reduce information asymmetry, and their non-Web-based disclosure personality. Of particular interest, these results indicate that some of the incentives thought to motivate initial voluntary disclosure also explain subsequent voluntary dissemination.