IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/accfor/v28y2004i3p265-281.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Colour as visual rhetoric in financial reporting

Author

Listed:
  • John K. Courtis

Abstract

Visual rhetoric within communication seeks to persuade through the use of picturing and encompasses words and colour. Visual rhetoric is present within annual reports. The specific role of colour in financial reporting is a neglected field of enquiry. A survey of 100 Hong Kong annual reports related colour usage to profitability change and found companies used more colour when profitability both increased and decreased. The eight most popular colours published in reports were identified and an experiment used them to proxy a pervasive form of visual rhetoric. Results show that some colours are associated with more (less) favourable perception formation and with more (less) investment allocations. Gender differences also were examined with some positive results. However, the story is not about identifying and advocating any specific colour associations for annual report usage or avoidance. The focus is about whether colour can influence perception formation and investment judgments. The evidence suggests that colour may not possess neutral effects in annual report communication. If replication studies with larger samples and in different cultural settings can corroborate this as a phenomenon then the implications may be far-reaching for annual report preparers, auditors and users.

Suggested Citation

  • John K. Courtis, 2004. "Colour as visual rhetoric in financial reporting," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 265-281, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:28:y:2004:i:3:p:265-281
    DOI: 10.1016/j.accfor.2004.07.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/j.accfor.2004.07.003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.accfor.2004.07.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Davison, Jane, 2011. "Paratextual framing of the annual report: Liminal literary conventions and visual devices," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 118-134.
    2. Saeideh Bakhshi & Eric Gilbert, 2015. "Red, Purple and Pink: The Colors of Diffusion on Pinterest," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-20, February.
    3. Isabel‐María García‐Sánchez & Cristina‐Andrea Araújo‐Bernardo, 2020. "What colour is the corporate social responsibility report? Structural visual rhetoric, impression management strategies, and stakeholder engagement," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(2), pages 1117-1142, March.
    4. Kanbaty, Majid & Hellmann, Andreas & He, Liyu, 2020. "Infographics in corporate sustainability reports: Providing useful information or used for impression management?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(C).
    5. Sevinc Kurt & Kelechi Kingsley Osueke, 2014. "The Effects of Color on the Moods of College Students," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(1), pages 21582440145, February.
    6. García Osma, Beatriz & Guillamón-Saorín, Encarna, 2011. "Corporate governance and impression management in annual results press releases," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 187-208.
    7. Stone, Gerard William, 2011. "Readability of accountants’ communications with small business—Some Australian evidence," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 247-261.
    8. Alessandra Allini & Adele Caldarelli & Rosanna Span?, 2017. "La disclosure nei Piani della Performance delle universit? italiane. Intenti simbolici verso approcci sostanziali di legittimazione," MANAGEMENT CONTROL, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2017(1), pages 37-59.
    9. Jessica H. Yang & Siwen Liu, 2017. "Accounting narratives and impression management on social media," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(6), pages 673-694, September.
    10. Gustavo Alberto Ruiz Rojas, 2016. "Retórica y contabilidad: de la crítica retórica a la retórica crítica," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 25(1), pages 243-270, December.
    11. Hellmann, Andreas & Ang, Lawrence & Sood, Suresh, 2020. "Towards a conceptual framework for analysing impression management during face-to-face communication," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    12. Mouhcine Tallaki & Enrico Bracci & Monia Castellini, 2015. "Accounting learning preferences: the role of visualisation," Working Papers 2015094, University of Ferrara, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:28:y:2004:i:3:p:265-281. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/racc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.