THE IMPACT OF WEBSITE DESIGN ON THE PERCEIVED CREDIBILITY OF INTERNET FINANCIAL REPORTING

Marketing and information systems research show that surface features of a website can induce credibility effects. We conduct an experiment to examine the question of credibility effects induced by the surface features of webbased fi nancial reporting. We predict that participants will perceive fi nancial data from sites with surface fl aws (poor style and incompleteness) to be of lower credibility. Consistent with our expectations, we fi nd that surface features can signifi cantly affect users' perceptions of the credibility of fi nancial information. We present further analyses showing that website surface features also impact investment attractiveness, suggesting that website characteristics may adversely affect investor perceptions. Copyright c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.