Hendrik Pieper, Philipp Ottenstein, Henning Zülch

• Digital reporting is a growing phenomenon in the ongoing practice of advanced financial reporting. Over the past years, the dissemination of financial information via the internet has increased and the use of standardized financial reports that are published in HTML format, called online financial reports (OFR), has become an important part of an integrative disclosure strategy. The results of prior qualitative studies already mentioned the perceived benefits of disseminating financial information using advanced financial reporting formats such as IFR and XBRL. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the benefits and consequences of using OFR as part of an integrative disclosure strategy. This study addresses this research gap and investigates the impact of OFR on the information environment of European listed firms. Our baseline results support the perceived benefits of the increasing dissemination of OFR in line with signaling theory. However, these findings are subject to endogeneity (self-selection) and are not robust to instrumental variable analysis. Overall, our findings are informative to different stakeholders on the capital markets such as financial report preparers and investors.