This study investigates factors affecting the credibility of sustainability reporting. Potential factors were first identified from prior studies and then refined through semi-structured interviews with sustainability reporting stakeholders including users, preparers, assurance providers and standard-setters. From this we construct a conceptual framework containing 26 variables that potentially influence credibility assessments of sustainability reports. This large set of variables is then evaluated by using a questionnaire survey of different stakeholder groups. The responses reveal that some source credibility variables (trustworthiness, track record and management expertise), assurance-related variables, and message characteristics (materiality and completeness of sustainability disclosures) are perceived by different stakeholder groups as particularly important to the credibility assessment, with source credibility factors dominating the rankings. An exploratory factor analysis shows that perceptions coalesce on four factors that are concerned with assurance and accountability, source (management) characteristics, message characteristics, and standards & ratings, with the structure of first two being dominated by the variables ranked as most important. The rank analysis also reveals significant differences between users and preparers in the ordering of influential credibility factors, and this is further supported by the significant differences between users’ and preparers’ mean scores for the ‘assurance and accountability’ and ‘source (management) characteristics’ factors.

本研究调查影响可持续发展报告可信度的因素。潜在因素首先从先前的研究中确定，然后通过对可持续发展报告利益相关者（包括用户、编制者、鉴证提供者和标准制定者）的半结构化访谈进行改进。由此，我们构建了一个包含 26 个变量的概念框架，这些变量可能会影响可持续发展报告的可信度评估。然后通过对不同利益相关者群体的问卷调查来评估这一庞大的变量集。答复表明，一些来源可信度变量（可信度、跟踪记录和管理专业知识）、与保证相关的变量、不同的利益相关者群体认为信息特征（可持续性披露的重要性和完整性）对可信度评估特别重要，其中来源可信度因素在排名中占主导地位。探索性因素分析表明，感知结合了与保证和问责制、来源（管理）特征、信息特征以及标准和评级有关的四个因素，其中前两个的结构由最重要的变量主导。排名分析还揭示了用户和编制者在影响可信度因素的排序方面存在显着差异，