Sustainability Reporting in NZ: An examination of readability

This paper examines the readability of sustainability reporting in theannual reports of New Zealand listed companies over ten years.Sustainability reporting was extracted from 170 reports and computercoded through readability software. Five readability indices were used,and the effect of reporting quantity, environmental sensitivity, andglobal operations on the readability of sustainability reporting wereexamined.The results show that although there is a significant increase in thenumber of companies reporting sustainability information in annualreports, the sustainability information published becomes more readableonly by three percent. This research reveals that longer sustainabilityreporting provides more readable information. However, there is nodifference between the readability of information published bycompanies operating in environmentally sensitive and companiesoperating in non-environmentally sensitive industries. The findingssupport that companies listed only on the New Zealand stock exchange(NZX), mostly, presented more readable information than companiesoperating in multiple stock markets.This research is the first sustainability reporting readability study inNew Zealand and provides companies, users of sustainabilityinformation, and regulators with knowledge of the readability changesover time and some of the determinants of readability.