The Impact of Human Rights Reporting and Presentation Formats on Non-Professional Investors’ Perceptions and Intentions to Invest

Abstract

Compared to other types of sustainability information, it remains uncommon for companies to report human rights information, and critics argue that when companies do report, they often report opportunistically. This is problematic as non-professional investors may rely on this information when making investment decisions. In this study, we use an experiment to examine how non-professional investors react to human rights information presented in varying formats (i.e., numerical, graphs, qualitative) compared to no reporting. Consistent with our expectations, we find that when information is positive, participants do not react to qualitative information. However, they react positively to numerical and graphical information and seem to use a less critical mindset when processing this type of information, which is associated in the literature with an “aura” of accuracy, objectivity, and neutrality. This is problematic because, similar to what is often the case in reality, participants had no certainty about the accuracy of the information. Further, when information is less positive, participants do not react to numerical or graphical information, but they do react negatively to qualitative information, which is more vague and may be perceived as companies trying to obfuscate less positive performance. We offer a critical discussion of our results.

My Human Rights Smart City: Improving Human Rights Transparency Identification System

“…In this context, this work aims to contribute to the reduction and mitigation of human rights violations-including environmental rights-through the creation of an application that helps municipal decision makers and civil society map human rights violations and make a city smarter by identifying regions in cities where human rights violations occur most frequently. Our work complements the view that human rights data are essential for corporate sustainability [41] and the planet. Initially, the application was designed to serve only Brazilian municipalities, but in the future, it may evolve to serve cities in other nations.…”

“…This research directly contributes to meeting the 2030 Agenda, in particular SDG 11 [8,12], mainly in the aspects of the goal of universal access to public spaces that are increasingly safe, inclusive, accessible, and green, especially for women and children, older people, and people with disabilities. Furthermore, this research contributes to SDG 16 [8,12], mainly in the goal of public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms through national legislation [41] and international agreements.…”

Assessing human rights disclosure: An empirical analysis of the oil and gas sector

“…Human rights disclosure as part of sustainability, on the other hand, is still uncommon (Chetty, 2011;McPhail & Ferguson, 2016). As a result, according to Brink et al (2022), sustainability reports do not adequately disclose human rights. According to Cahaya and Hervina (2018), the number of studies concerned with human rights has increased in recent years, and as a result, certain journals, such as Critical Perspectives on Accounting, have released special issues on the subject.…”