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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a narrative compared to a traditional fact-related format of financial information elicits more involved processing of such information by consumers and therefore more informed choices of retirement savings.

A total of 394 undergraduates were recruited to three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants presented with information about a mutual fund were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (narrative format vs fact-related format crossed with optimistic vs pessimistic financial forecast). In both experiments dependent variables were positive affect, emotive response and purchase intention, and in Experiment 2 also scepticism about the information. Involvement and financial knowledge were furthermore measured in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3 information was presented about a savings account. Participants were randomly assigned to either a condition with a narrative or a fact-related information format. The dependent variables were the same as in Experiment 2.

The research finds support for that information about a financial message in a narrative format results in stronger positive affect, emotive response and purchase intention. No effect of scepticism toward the message is observed. Involvement and financial knowledge tend to interact with format. Mediation analyses support that positive affect induced by the narrative format impacts on emotive response which jointly with positive affect impacts on purchase intention.

The research suggests that a narrative message format may be used in marketing financial products to increase passive consumerś involvement.

The first demonstration of that a narrative format has an effect on processing of financial information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore who uses narrative reporting information contained within online corporate annual reports and assess the relative use of different types of narrative information.

Web server logs were used to analyse over one million instances where information is successfully delivered to users of the corporate web sites of 15 FTSE 350 companies.

The most frequent users of the online annual report are, respectively, private individuals, those registered under internet service providers, employees and professional investors/creditors. The results suggest that those with greater experience and expertise in preparing and using financial accounts adopt different information preferences with respect to the online annual report. Although experienced users such as professional investors, creditors and accounting firms use the annual report to download predominantly detailed financial accounting data, the widespread availability and accessibility of the online annual report allows narratives to provide a source of general company information for employees and a wider stakeholder audience.

The paper presents the first large‐scale survey into the use and users of online annual reports.

Accounting literature is definite about the content and presentation of traditional financial statements, but the basic information to be provided in the narrative reports of public sector entities remains unsettled. This paper aims to investigate the needs and expectations of stakeholders (primary users and preparers) regarding the content and presentation of narrative reports in the public sector of Nigeria.

The research used a qualitative approach that draws on stakeholder and contingency theories to collect primary data through in-depth individual interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. Data were analysed by a thematic method using the NVivo 11 Pro software package.

The study reveals that financial statements constitute the statutory financial reports of public sector entities in Nigeria as narrative reporting is undeveloped, both as a concept and in practice. Stakeholders believe that narrative reporting is required to enhance the accountability usefulness of the annual financial reports published by the government and public agencies. Data analysis further reveals that public perception about the management of government financial resources influences the information needs of stakeholders regarding financial reporting. In addition, stakeholders consider the approved budget as the cornerstone of public financial reporting. Accordingly, users and other stakeholders expect public sector narrative reports to provide budget-based performance information that relates the accounting data presented in the financial statements to the key budgetary provisions, in both financial outlays and service delivery achievements. Stakeholders also expect narrative reports to be presented in plain language and provide information about the impact of financial decisions and actions on the basic socioeconomic variables that signpost citizens’ well-being, such as education, health care, employment and security.

The study suggests that the inclusion of narrative information in the statutory financial reports of public entities in Nigeria is imperative and should engage the attention of policymakers and relevant regulatory authorities. In addition, a more elaborate systematic investigation of the information needs of stakeholders in Nigeria should be undertaken by relevant units of government.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first documented research on narrative reporting and the information needs of a broad range of stakeholders in the public sector of Nigeria. The paper identifies the approved budget as the focal point of governmental financial reporting, and a clear linkage between budget provisions, accounting results and service delivery achievements as the basic content of a narrative report in developing countries.

Some virtual, immersive stories are filled with documents that users must locate and interact with to experience a narrative. Exploring a new area of inquiry in the information science field, this study focuses on individuals' experiences with documents in a particular 3D storytelling world.

Using a qualitative approach, this study examined user interactions with virtual documents to better understand the relationship between information behavior and narrative spaces. This study employed observations of users in a story-rich world, followed by semistructured interviews using virtual artifacts and stimulated recall.

Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study found that (1) environmental and personal influences, (2) the search and the narrative experience and (3) expectation and confirmation events surround a user's experiences with documents in storytelling worlds. These influences and experiences determine the user's relationship with these documents, which may be considered narrative ephemera – objects that a user accumulates to create and structure a story. This model of narrative ephemera depicts the user's search for narrative cadence, fulfillment of competence needs and visions of story events or the user's own lived experiences. Individuals may experience these phenomena from a single document, shifting back and forth between the designers' intentions and the users' own realities.

This study represents a first attempt to investigate information behavior in a distributed narrative space: a virtual world filled with documents. This study reveals that commonly employed information behavior theories, as well as literary and motivation theories, may be well suited for investigating story worlds. Continued research in this area of inquiry may benefit educators as well as designers of digital stories.

This paper aims to use a grounded theory approach to reveal that corporate private disclosure content has structure and this is critical in making “invisible” intangibles in corporate value creation visible to capital market participants.

A grounded theory approach is used to develop novel empirical patterns concerning the nature of corporate disclosure content in the form of narrative. This is further developed using literature of value creation and of narrative.

Structure to content is based on common underlying value creation and narrative structures, and the use of similar categories of corporate intangibles in corporate disclosure cases. It is also based on common change or response qualities of the value creation story as well as persistence in telling the core value creation story. The disclosure is a source of information per se and also creates an informed context for capital market participants to interpret the meaning of new events in a more informed way.

These insights into the structure of private disclosure content are different to the views of relevant information content implied in public disclosure means such as in financial reports or in the demands of stock exchanges for “material” or price sensitive information. They are also different to conventional academic concepts of (capital market) value relevance.

This analysis further develops the grounded theory insights into disclosure content and could help improve new disclosure guidance by regulators.

The insights create many new opportunities for developing theory and enhancing public disclosure content. The paper illustrates this potential by exploring new ways of measuring the value relevance of this novel form of contextual information and associated benchmarks. This connects value creation narrative to a conventional value relevance view and could stimulate new types of market event studies.

This paper, for the first time, classifies narrative information into complementary and supplementary. For the purpose of the paper, complementary narrative information is defined as that information which refers to specific numbers presented in the statutory accounts (profit and loss and balance sheet). Non‐specific narrative information is classified as supplementary. Having made the distinction and provided reasons for such a distinction the study investigates the extent of complementary narrative commentaries on numbers from the statutory accounts. The study also investigates which company‐specific characteristics are associated with the extent of complementary narrative commentaries. An index consisting of 46 items which must be reported in the statutory accounts was used to measure the extent of complementary narrative commentaries in the annual reports of 170 listed UK companies. The findings suggest that, on average, the companies comment on 39.9% of the numbers appearing in their statutory accounts. Using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model, the results indicate that company size, gearing, profitability, liquidity ratio, the presence of exceptional items, and substantial institutional investment are significantly associated with the extent of complementary narrative commentaries. However, auditor type, directors’ share ownership, and the proportion of non‐executive directors are not significantly associated with the extent of complementary narrative commentaries. The research has important implications for accounting regulators, users of annual reports and future research into the usefulness narrative information provided in annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to extend and improve prior readability and obfuscation research by investigating the effect of connotation on readability and obfuscation. Furthermore, the paper aims to develop and apply a novel connotation‐based obfuscation assessment approach.

In total, 87 chairman reports of firms included in the Standard & Poor's ASX200 index were analyzed. The readability of sections and connotation‐based groups of sentences within these narratives were assessed using the Flesch readability formula. The presence or absence of obfuscation within the analyzed chairman addresses was determined using a novel connotation‐based obfuscation assessment approach.

The study demonstrates that the mid section within the analyzed chairman addresses was significantly more difficult to read than the first and last sections. However, the notion that these reading difficulty differences were due to the prevalence of positive and negative news within these sections could not be supported. A subsequent analysis of the reading difficulty differences between connotation‐based groups of sentences identified the largely positive group of sentences as an important source of reading difficulty. Finally, the advantages resulting from an application of the connotation‐based obfuscation assessment developed in this paper over the traditional obfuscation assessment techniques used in prior literature are demonstrated.

This paper provides a substantial contribution to the literature by establishing a direct link between the connotation of information provided in financial reporting narratives and the readability and obfuscation exhibited by these narratives. The novel assessment approach developed in this paper can be used to benefit preparers and users of financial reporting information by identifying types of sentences whose preparation and/or analysis should be approached cautiously.

The debate about whether corporate reports should focus on numbers or narrative is long-standing. The recent push for business model information to be included in corporate reports has revitalised the debate. Many scholars suggest this constitutes a move towards narrative-based reporting. This study aims to investigate the debate and draws a comparison with the juxtaposition of the narrative and rational paradigms. This study also investigates how accountingisation influences the way business model information is presented in corporate reports.

This study analyses data from the financial and non-financial reports from 86 globally listed companies. This study first uses content analysis to code the data. This study then uses a partial least squares-structural equation model to test how accountingisation influences how firms report their business model information.

This study finds that accountingisation and a rational paradigm shape how companies present information about their business model in their financial and non-financial reports. This suggests that the dominance of quantitative measures in accounting affects even the presentation of narrative-based information. Despite the much-touted shift towards qualitative reporting, this study argues that companies find it difficult to cast off the yoke of a traditional numbers-based mindset.

This paper contributes to the debate on numbers- versus narrative-based corporate reporting and the workings of narrative and rational paradigms. In it, this study lays out theoretical and empirical findings of accountingisation. This study also makes a case for freeing corporate reports from the shackles of an accountingisation mindset.

This study provides new insights into how companies report information about their business models and the influence of narrative and rational paradigms on financial and non-financial reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to present the gathering, integration and analysis of digital information sources for the creation of a conceptual framework for alternate reality games (ARGs). ARGs hold potential for libraries, education, healthcare and many other sectors.

Case studies were performed on three previously played ARGs to create case reports. The various digital information sources for each game, sourced from multiple media, are compiled into a chronologically ordered game narrative which formed the case reports. The focus of the paper is on the analysis of the case reports using constant comparative analysis to identify categories and subcategories. Relationships are established, based on each game, between the categories and subcategories to inform the creation of game diagrams. The game diagrams are then combined to create a conceptual framework that describes the functioning and components of an ARG.

The conceptual framework effectively described the types of information found within an ARG as well as how these different categories of information interact and link to one another. The framework also provides an abstract description of the components of ARGs, namely narrative, game actions and community.

The conceptual framework produced by the analysis enables an understanding of ARGs and how they are played and designed. Insight into how to analyse ARGs based on the information generated for the play of the game by both the players and the game designers is gained. Where other studies have provided insight into the phenomena of ARGs, this study focuses on constructing a conceptual framework of ARGs using the information generated by the game.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how trust in the sender of financial information and a narrative vs fact-related format of the information influence intentions to save in a mutual fund.

In Experiment 1, 186 undergraduates participate and in Experiment 2, 434 Swedish citizens between 18 and 70 years randomly chosen from a consumer panel. In both experiments participants are randomized to two conditions in which they are presented with the same information about a mutual fund in a narrative or a traditional fact-related format. In four different between-groups conditions crossed with information format, pre-tested descriptions of different fictitious banks are presented. The descriptions are combined in a fractional factorial design such that one bank is low in the three trust determinants of competence, benevolence and transparency, whereas the other three banks are high in one of the trust determinants but lower in the others. Ratings are made of the information with respect to how much positive affect the information evokes, interest in the message and intention to save in the mutual fund.

In both experiments the narrative compared to the fact-based information format increases positive affect, interest and intention to save. Trust in the bank has an independent effect of increasing the intention to save.

The narrative format of financial information may be key to increase involvement in financial choices but needs to be supplemented by a message that reinforces the positive affect and interest evoked by the format.

A demonstration of how a narrative format of financial information and trust in the sender jointly influence intentions to save in a mutual fund.