Perceived usefulness and perceived quality of internet financial reporting in Malaysia

Abstract

This study investigates the perceived usefulness and perceived quality towards the intention use of Internet Financial Reporting (IFR) in Malaysia from user’s perspective. There are five qualitative characteristics that describe useful financial information, which are relevance, reliability, understandability, comparability and timeliness. The researcher also applies part of the theory of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in the research. The research was conducted by using Internet-based questionnaire on popular online forums in Malaysia, and the respondents in this study were stock investors. A total of 90 questionnaires were collected out of 200 questionnaires distributed, indicating a 45% rate of return. The methods applied in this study include descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. There are four main results in this study. First, the descriptive analysis showed that the top five components of user’s preference of IFR are annual report, dividend, current share price, balance sheet and historical share price. Second, the level of usefulness and quality of IFR perceived by users are at an intermediate level, and perceived usefulness has the highest mean score among the variables. Third, Kendall’s tau-b correlation showed that there is a significant association between independent variables and the intention to use IFR. Lastly, the regression analysis for the first model showed that perceived usefulness and comparability were found to be the most significant predictors of the intention to use IFR before making investment decision. The regression analysis for the second model showed that perceived usefulness and perceived quality are both significant towards the intention to use IFR. The rating of IFR components in this study can be used as a guidance to indicate the user’s preference. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is suitable to investigate the quality and usage of IFR from a user’s perspective