Development of a Financial Reporting Readability Model based on the Disclosure of Social Responsibility, Professional Ethics, and Tone Management (Reporting Tone)

The readability of financial reporting as a factor influencing the credibility of financial statements and investment decisions of companies has been one of the topics of interest in financial literature in recent years.  In this regard, the present study was carried out with the aim of developing a readability model of financial reporting based on the disclosure of social responsibility, professional ethics, and tone management (reporting tone). The statistical population of this research is made up of members of the Public Accountants’ Society of Tehran and Shiraz. Among them, 260 participants were selected as the statistical sample using the available sampling method. In order to present the model, among the 34 primary indicators of ‘disclosure of social responsibility, professional ethics and tone management’, 9 indicators for each of the variables were selected using the binomial distribution technique (SPSS software) based on the exploratory factor analysis technique (SPSS software). They were classified into three general classification categories, which were confirmed by using the confirmatory factor analysis technique (Lisrel software). Also, the results of the structural equation modeling technique (Smart PLS software) showed that social responsibility and professional ethics had a positive and significant effect and tone management had an inverse and significant effect on the readability of financial reporting.  Providing a comprehensive model for measuring the readability of financial reporting can increase the understanding and knowledge of investors and researchers in the field of capital market.