The information value of infographics in ESG reports. Do infographics explain ESG performance?

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Supervisors: Thewissen, James
Faculty: Louvain School of Management
Degree label: Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée
Abstract: This article aims to highlight the relationship between companies’ ESG performance and their use of visual elements, more specifically images and infographics, in the ESG reports they publish. Using a database that contains 1,667 ESG reports from 416 US companies, we find that there is a curvilinear relationship between these variables. The results show that the presence of visual elements in general leads to a positive ESG score, while the relationship reverses when their presence becomes too important. There is therefore an optimal number of infographics and/or images, beyond which these elements are no longer beneficial to readers’ interpretation. Overall, this paper makes a theoretical contribution to previous literature by showing that infographics can, on the one hand, help companies to highlight their ESG practices in a fully informative way, while some companies might use them for impression management purposes by hiding or idealizing their actions relating to environmental, social, and governance issues.