TR8-04 Interactive Data and Investor Decision Making

Presenters: Joanne Locke, Alan Lowe and Andy Lymer

Restoring investor confidence through improved transparency and reliability of financial reporting is a goal shared by regulators around the world. So as the U.S. and Japan implement their ‘interactive data’ programmes and other countries consider following suit – an important issue to address is the nature and decision needs of retail investors. In this paper we report the results of an experiment in which participants were asked to make decisions using PDF and XBRL tagged data. We consider the impact of the different data formats on their decision making, their decision making models and their perceptions of the two formats. The implications of the results for the regulation of interactive data reporting and the development of applications to support investors are discussed.