The Impact of Vivid Graphical Presentation of Financial Information in Digital Annual Reports on Investors' Impressions of Management and Firm Performance

ABSTRACT This study examines the effect of graphical vividness on nonprofessional investors' impressions of management and firm performance when the financial performance news is either positive or negative. Conducting a 2 × 2 between-participants experiment with 470 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), I find that when the news is positive, nonprofessional investors have more positive impressions of management, which, in turn, leads to more positive impressions of firm performance when the graphical presentation is vivid versus pallid. In contrast, when the news is negative, presenting graphs vividly has little effect on nonprofessional investors' impressions. The study contributes to regulators and practice by demonstrating that allowing a high degree of presentation flexibility in digital annual reports has behavioral outcomes to nonprofessional investors' judgments and decisions. The study also contributes to the strategic disclosure literature by demonstrating the impact of graphical vividness in presenting financial performance information.