The Joint Effects of Argument Quality and Interactivity on Nonprofessional Investors' Perceptions of Disclosure Credibility and Investment Decisions

ABSTRACT We employ the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to investigate the dual influences of the central route (i.e., argument quality) and the peripheral route (i.e., interactivity) on investment-related judgments and decisions. In a between-subject experiment using 297 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to proxy for nonprofessional investors, we examine the joint effects of interactivity, argument quality, and news valence. Our results indicate that nonprofessional investors are more likely to invest more in firms when the argument quality of a disclosure is strong and accompanied by interactive presentations. Further, PLS analyses examining perceptions of interactivity provide additional insights about the mechanisms of the effects. This research contributes to the disclosure literature by demonstrating the influence of increased interactivity in disclosure settings, and to the accounting information systems research on interactivity in financial reporting by demonstrating the importance of considering perceived interactivity in addition to the provision of actual interactive design features.