The Effect of Professional Accountant’s Different Levels of Assurance on Investors’ Degree of Confidence and Reliability of Sustainability Indicators - Experimental Study

This research aims to study the level of assurance, whether it is reasonable assurance or limited assurance, that professional accountant provides on sustainability indicators which are included in corporate sustainability reports, as well as examining the difference in effect of level of assurance on investors’ degree of confidence and reliability of those indicators in making decisions.
Prior research provides mixed results from different countries, therefore, this research seeks to provide empirical evidence from the Egyptian environment by conducting an experiment on a sample of postgraduate students in the Accounting and Auditing department at the Faculty of Commerce, Alexandria university. As there is a strong support from several studies that postgraduate students act as appropriate surrogates for retail investors (non-professional investors). A number of sustainability indicators from virtual company are presented to them, after that reasonable conclusion, limited conclusion and a third case with no assurance are provided to them, in order to determine the difference in their confidence and reliability of those indictors as a result of providing different levels of assurance.
Results show that investors’ degree of confidence and reliability of sustainability indicators differ, as a result of providing different levels of assurance, as it is in favor of reasonable assurance, which means that the degree of confidence and reliability increase whenever a higher level of assurance are provided. Moreover, further tests are conducted to support the results of prior research regarding the positive effect of assurance service on investors’ perception. Results confirm the existence of positive effect for both reasonable assurance and limited assurance on investors’ confidence and reliability of sustainability indicators.