What factors affect the quality of sustainability reports? The case of reports from selected European Union member states

Today, we can observe a growing number of companies issuing sustainability reports. The growing attention to sustainability issues and consequently the increase in the number of sustainability reports is not correlated with the quality of the reports published by organizations. The problem is that sustainability reports do not always provide complete data that readers desire, which in turn intensifies the problem with the evaluation and comparison of the organization’s results achieved in this scope. Differences also occur between reporting models used in different EU countries caused by, inter alia, differently applied EU legislation on the disclosure of non-financial information in different Member States. The purpose of this article is to present the relationships that exist between selected factors and the quality of sustainability reports. The quality of these types of report is defined as the quality of information contained in the report while the quality of the information is defined as their relevance and credibility. To examine quality of individual sustainability reports, a specific evaluation tool was used. The assessment questionnaire consists of 17 criteria grouped into two categories (relevance and credibility of information). The results of the study indicate what factors impact the quality of sustainability reports the most. Taking into account those factors in the process of preparing of such report should ensure its high quality.