How does combined assurance affect the reliability of integrated reports and investors’ judgment

As integrated reports evolve to meet the needs of stakeholders, it is increasingly important to establish reliable information. We examine the effect of a new technique to enhance the reporting reliability, referred to as ‘combined assurance’ (through which the audit committee coordinates the assurance roles of management, internal assurance and external assurance providers and concludes on the effectiveness of risk management, internal controls and reporting quality), on restoring investors’ willingness to invest when there are significant reporting reliability risks. We conduct a series of experiments with different operationalizations of reporting reliability risks. We find that the communication of combined assurance can restore investors’ perceived reliability of reported information and willingness to invest when there is bad news (Experiment 1); when there is a non-financial key audit matter (KAM) indicating estimation uncertainty in the non-financial information (Experiment 2); and when there is a financial KAM indicating risks of manipulated financial reporting (Experiment 3). Our study has implications for practitioners, standard setters, and regulators who are exploring possible mechanisms to enhance the reliability of financial and non-financial information in the integrated reports.