Stakeholder Information Needs and ESG Report Design: A UserCentered Information Architecture Approach

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🔬研究者:Provides a rigorous mixed-method study linking information science and disclosure theory, offering a replicable framework for improving ESG report design.

🏢実務担当者:Corporate sustainability teams can adopt the UC-ESG-IA framework to redesign reports that better meet stakeholder information needs and improve usability scores.

🏛政策担当者:Regulators (e.g., SEBI, ISSB, SEC) can consider mandating user-centered design principles in disclosure standards to enhance effectiveness of ESG reporting.

Purpose. Although the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting has been adopted at a very fast rate all over the world, corporate sustainability reports continue to be criticized as having poor usability, excessive information, and a structural design that is not well designed to address the various information requirements of the heterogeneous groups of stakeholders. This paper explores the convergence of stakeholder information science, user-centered design (UCD), and information architecture (IA) concepts to suggest a new model of redesigning ESG reports as user-centered information systems. Methodology. It uses a mixed-method research design, which combines: (a) a structured survey of 312 stakeholders in four groups (institutional investors, financial analysts, regulators, and NGO representatives); (b) content analysis of ESG disclosures of 50 NIFTY-listed companies against IA best practices; and (c) task-based usability testing between current report formats and a prototype redesigned ESG report The analysis of data is done using SPSS to analyze quantitative survey data, thematic coding to analyze qualitative data, and standardized usability measures such as the System Usability Scale (SUS) and SUPR-Q. Key Findings. Findings indicate that there are high levels of information priorities among the stakeholder groups with institutional investors focusing on governance and climate metrics and NGOs focusing on biodiversity and community development. The current ESG reports have a lower score than the SUS usability threshold (mean 48.6) and the prototype redesigned report has 77.4, which is statistically significant (p < 0.001). Hierarchical pillar-based IA with faceted search, standardized metadata schemas aligned to GRI/BRSR/TCFD, and interactive dashboards are the highest-impact design interventions identified. Practical Implications. The suggested User-Centered ESG Information Architecture (UC-ESG-IA) framework offers practical design requirements to corporate ESG teams, the BRSR disclosures regulated by SEBI in India, and international reporting platforms. The framework fills the gap between information systems design and the accounting disclosure theory, providing an interdisciplinary approach to next-generation ESG communication that is rigorous.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.46647/ijetms.2026.v10i02.030first seen 2026-05-05 21:30:49
• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.46647/ijetms.2026.v10i02.030first seen 2026-05-05 21:47:49