Determinants of level of Web-Based Financial Reporting in the Nigerian Banking Sector

Abstract

Web-Based Financial Reporting is the dissemination of a, firm's financial statements on the internet as against the Traditional Paper- Based Financial Reporting. It is a new but fast growing Reporting technique by corporate entities all over the world which has attracted researchers to investigate what factors determine firms' choosing to report their activities via internet. It was, however, discovered that information published by firms using this medium varies. AS some publish full statements, others publish partial or highlight of their activities. We therefore attempted to' empirically study the determinants of the level of information firms provided on their web-sites by studying secondary data of five banks listed on Nigerian Stock Exchange for five years, 2007 - 2011. IFR was used as surrogate for the level of Internet Financial Reporting. It as well served as the independent variable. Liquidity (LDTY), profitability (PROFJ, size (SIZE) and leverage (LEV) were used as the independent variables. The data were analyzed using Ordinary Least Square. The results
show that the trio of LDTY, PROF and SIZE relate significantly with the level of IFR and determine the degree of information firms publish their web-sites. It was recommended that financial regulatory bodies such as IASB, FASB, etc develop all-encompassing standard
guiding IFR in order to avoid varying information provided on the internet.