The Impact of Combating Bribery and Corruption Report Assurance on Financial Analysts' Decisions

There is an increasing pressure on companies to provide nonfinancial information. An important element of related nonfinancial reports is information on combating bribery and corruption. This study examines the impact of voluntary assurance on such reports on financial analyst perceptions and decisions. Moreover, it investigates whether the type of assurance provider (financial statement auditor vs. another audit firm) and the assurance level (limited vs. reasonable assurance) exert an influence. For this purpose, we conducted an experiment with a 2 x 2 + 1 between-subject design and financial analysts from Turkey as participants. The extent of financial analyst reliance on the combating bribery and corruption report of a fictitious company, their likelihood to recommend the purchase of shares of the fictitious company, their related credit risk assessment and the likelihood that they purchase shares in the fictitious company served as dependent variables. The analyses are based on 116 responses after the elimination of manipulation check failures. Our findings indicate that assurance on combating bribery and corruption reports results in perceptions and decisions which are more favourable to the fictitious company. Moreover, they do not indicate a significant impact of the type of assurance provider. However, our participants' perceptions are more positive in the case of reasonable assurance.