An empirical study on the indexes of internet financial reporting: the case of Malaysia

Abstract

This research paper is an attempt to study the items which are important in Internet financial reporting (IFR) from the view of annual report prepares. The study employs the survey questionnaires in gathering information from the respondents on significant items that should be listed under IFR checklist. Based on an extensive literature review the level of IFR in this study is divided into two, namely content dimension and presentation dimension. The result has shown five most important items in the current year which are: income statement of current year, balance sheet of current year, cash flow statement of current year, auditor report of current year, and annual report of current year (full text) which could illustrate the current content dimension. Presentation dimension on the other hand covers other five most important items which are the length of time taken to download the company's website, PDF annual report format, hyperlink to financial analysis, the existence of hyperlink in the annual report and link to the website. The result empirically proves that 87 items could be used for IFR checklist to ascertain IFR's level of disclosure. The evidence on Malaysia is relevant to other developing countries and beyond. Future research will also come into discussion.