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In addition to financial reporting, more and more companies report environmental, social and governance (ESG) information in emerging countries. This practice is intended to fulfill the information needs of all the company’s stakeholders, and more specifically the investors. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze whether investors include ESG information into their investment allocation decisions in Tunisian capital market. Second, to identify the information dimension having the more effect on their investment allocation decisions.

A field experiment was conducted in an emerging country (Tunisia) among 245 novices and experienced financial stakeholders to analyze how ESG information is taken into account in their investment allocation decisions.

The results of the factorial mixed analysis of variance show that ESG information influenced the investment allocation decisions in Tunisia. In addition, the results of the post-hoc test indicate that governance and social information had more influence than environmental information.

This paper is limited to the analysis of the influence of ESG information only on the decisions of financial stakeholders in Tunisia. In future research works, it will be relevant to study the decisions of other stakeholders and to carry out comparative studies between several countries.

The results can only strengthen and motivate companies to pay more attention to their ESG information disclosure practices. They are also likely to attract the attention of the accounting standard setters on the need to standardize these practices.

The original contribution of this paper lies not only in the analysis of three dimensions of extra-financial information: E, S and G through an experiment carried out in an emerging country, but also especially in the comparison of the influence of each dimension on investment allocation decisions.

The field, currently termed “accounting”, constitutes a confused mix of accounting theories, accounting techniques, and accounting practices. This confusion is clearly reflected in accounting curriculum. Parallel to this confusion is a confusion at the sociological level, where the roles of academicians and those of practitioners are confusingly interchanged. These confusions represent conceptual and practical barriers to the ongoing efforts to develop the discipline.

Purpose – This study's purpose is twofold. First, we assess the extent of corporate social responsibility disclosure. Second, we investigate the determinants of the decision to disclose social responsibility information.

Methodology/approach – This research focuses on analyzing corporate social responsibility disclosure through the annual reports of 23 Tunisian listed firms over a four-year period from 2001 to 2004. A multivariate analysis of social responsibility disclosure is employed to test the factors influencing this type of disclosure.

Findings – The findings in this study suggest that corporate social responsibility disclosure did increase from 2001 to 2004 and disclosure was primarily literal and regarding products. Results also suggest that a firm's internationalization degree, their debt level, and the degree of their political visibility are the significant factors influencing the decision of corporate social responsibility disclosure.

Research limitations and implications – This study is subject to the usual limits of the content analysis method use. The small size of the sample, its composition, and its choice in a nonrandom way may make it suffer from selectivity bias.

Originality/value – This study contributes to the analysis of corporate social responsibility disclosure practices in an emerging country context by analyzing the nature of the trends in social responsibility disclosure practices and examining the impact of certain firm characteristics on such practices.