Date: Tuesday, 28 October 2025, at 12:15 pm
Venue: Seminar Room Bruguier Pacini, DEM
Speaker and Title:
Maria Gabriela Misiuda (Technische Universität Berlin)
Internal Corporate Governance and Reporting Regimes in Sustainability Reporting: Effects on Investors’ Willingness to Invest
Abstract:
Sustainability reports are becoming increasingly important in investors’ decision-making. In particular, positive sustainability information can increase investors’ willingness to invest, provided that they perceive this information as credible. Several mechanisms can enhance such perceived credibility, and one important factor is internal corporate governance. However, previous research has mainly examined the role of internal corporate governance in the context of voluntary sustainability reporting. Given the current shift from voluntary to mandatory reporting regimes in practice, this study examines how the reporting regime moderates the effect of internal corporate governance.
Specifically, we analyze whether mandatory reporting can substitute for strong internal corporate governance or whether the two mechanisms reinforce each other. To address this question, we plan a behavioral experiment with retail investors to examine how internal corporate governance (weak vs. strong) and reporting regime (voluntary vs. mandatory) in sustainability reporting affect investors’ willingness to invest. We further explore how investors’ perceptions and evaluations of sustainability information under these different conditions may help explain differences in their willingness to invest.