Perceived Usefulness of Corporate Disclosure Through the Web: An Empirical Study

The World Wide Web (www) has been adopted as a new medium for disseminating corporate information. It is a medium that offers numerous benefits for distributing business information to stakeholders over traditional means like the printed annual reports. The present paper analyzes the perceived usefulness of corporate disclosure through the Web by surveying retail investors taken from the selected cities of Punjab and Chandigarh (union territory). The data is collected from the selected respondents by personally administering the pretested questionnaire. Factor analysis has been applied to identify the structure of the Web-based factors, which have the potential to enhance the usefulness of corporate information. Improvement in quality of information, better decision making, increased usefulness of information, better evaluation, and enhanced competition have been identified as the factors explaining the perceived usefulness of corporate disclosure through the Web.