Title: Disclosure of corporate social responsibility: a comparison between traditional and digital reporting. An empirical analysis on Italian listed companies

Authors: Daniela Coluccia; Stefano Fontana; Silvia Solimene

Addresses: Department of Business and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Castro Laurenziano 9, Rome, Italy ' Sapienza University of Rome, Via Castro Laurenziano 9, Rome, Italy ' Sapienza University of Rome, Via Castro Laurenziano 9, Rome, Italy

Abstract: During recent years, there has been an increase in corporate social responsibility (following CSR) disclosure not only through sustainability reports but also through digital reporting. The purpose of our research is to study the CSR disclosure made by a sample of Italian listed companies. In particular, we built a disclosure index based on CSR disclosure in the sustainability report (traditional reporting) and a disclosure index based on CSR disclosure on the website (digital reporting). Our aim is to verify if there is a convergence between the two communication tools or whether companies prefer one of them. Specifically, we want to verify if digital reporting has really improved the quality and the level of voluntary disclosure. Our findings revealed that the CSR disclosures were generally shallow and unsystematic, indicating that online CSR reporting of our sample is still in infancy.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; CSR disclosure; digital reporting; disclosure index; websites; sustainability reporting; voluntary disclosure; webranking; traditional reporting; Italy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMFA.2016.081854

International Journal of Managerial and Financial Accounting, 2016 Vol.8 No.3/4, pp.230 - 246

Received: 09 May 2016
Accepted: 18 Jul 2016
Published online: 29 Jan 2017 *

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