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The purpose of this research is to verify whether the disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) positively affects the level of integration of financial and sustainability information.

The sample of the analysis relies on European public companies. The data were gathered from Refinitiv, focussing on a multi-year observation from 2013 to 2021 and performing a fixed-effect regression. According to the extant literature, the authors developed the Intellectual Capital Score and the Integrated Thinking and Reporting Score.

The more disclosure of IC, the more financial and sustainability information is integrated. Indeed, the results confirm that the disclosure of IC enhances the level of integration of financial and sustainability information.

The study enriches academic knowledge about IC in conjunction with integrated reporting (IR) and integrated thinking by highlighting its relevance in the value-creation process and acting as a trait d’union of the disciplines.

For standard setters, the research may be framed to redefine the guidelines explaining the information on IC to be disclosed. Moreover, it could be helpful for practitioners when identifying the IC information that deserves to be disclosed, other than being exploitable to conduct enterprises geared towards adopting integrated reports.

This study answers the call for further research on the relationship between financial information and sustainability information to highlight their joint perspectives quantitatively.

The privacy paradox refers to the situation where users of online services continue to disclose personal information even when they are concerned about their privacy. One recent study of Facebook users published in Internet Research concludes that laziness contributes to the privacy paradox. The purpose of this study is to challenge the laziness explanation. To do so, we adopt a cognitive dispositions perspective and examine how a person’s external locus of control influences the privacy paradox, beyond the trait of laziness.

A mixed method approach is adopted. We first develop a research model which hypothesises the moderating effects of both laziness and external locus of control on privacy issues. We quantitatively test the research model through a two-phase survey of 463 Facebook users using the Hayes PROCESS macro. We then conduct a qualitative study to verify and develop the findings from the quantitative phase.

The privacy paradox holds true. The findings confirm the significant influence of external locus of control on the privacy paradox. While our quantitative findings suggest laziness does not affect the association between privacy concerns and self-disclosure, our qualitative data does provide some support for the laziness explanation.

Our study extends existing research by showing that a person’s external locus of control provides a stronger explanation for the privacy paradox than the laziness perspective. As such, this study further reveals the boundary conditions on which the privacy paradox exists for some users of social networking sites, but not others. Our study also suggests cognitive dissonance coping strategies, which are largely absent in prior investigations, may influence the privacy paradox.