Copyright © 2014 Driss Rahma, Jarboui Anis . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. International Journal of Accounting and Economics Studies, 2 (1) (2014) 34-39 International Journal of Accounting and Economics Studies Journal home page: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJAES doi: 10.14419/ijaes.v2i1.1505 Research Paper Social disclosure: What are the main explanatory factors? An empirical test in the Tunisian context Driss Rahma *, Jarboui Anis Department of Finance and Accounting, Higher Institute of Business Administration (ISAAS), Tunisia *Corresponding author E-mail: rahma.driss@gmail.com Abstract The paper constitutes an attempt of enrichment of researches relating to the publication of corporate social information in the annual reports. It aims to clarify the explanatory factors of the social disclosure. In fact, several research studies have focused on topics relating to the social disclosure in developed countries. However, few studies have analyzed this practice in the Tunisian context. Consequently, the paper tries to identify and assess factors that may influence the decision to publish social information in the annual reports of Tuni- sian companies. A survey of the literature treating of the topic of social disclosure is carried out and allowing the reformulation of the hypotheses of research. On the methodology, we made recourse to the technique of content analysis of the annual reports of 23 Tunisian companies during five years (from 2007 to 2011). As for results, we find that Tunisian companies tend to publish more information con- cerning the category « human resources » in comparison with the other studied informational categories (environment, products and im- plication in the community). As for the test of hypotheses, theses relating to the political visibility, leverage, performance, and number of employees are representing the explanatory factors of the social reporting in Tunisia. Keywords: Social Disclosure; Voluntary Disclosure; Annual Reports; Explanatory Factors; Content Analysis. 1. Introduction With major environmental and contemporary social issues, a com- pany has an obligation to be socially responsible to its stake- holders. In fact, issues such as pollution, waste, resources deple- tion, product quality and safety, the rights and status of workers and the power of large corporations have become the focus of increasing attention and concern (Hussainy et al., 2011). There- fore, social disclosure refers to a company’s voluntary contribu- tion to sustainable development which goes beyond legal require- ments (Gamerschlag et al., 2010). Several research studies have focused on topics relating to the social disclosure in developed countries (Hussainy et al., (2013); Zhang (2013); Fuertes et Garcia (2013); Perrigot (2012); Farouk et al., (2011); Gamerschlag et al., (2011); Lu et al., (2010)….) How- ever, few studies have analyzed this practice in emergent contexts like the Tunisian context. In addition, actually, previous studies related to social disclosure are characterised by three principal types of empirical research (Reverte, 2009). In first, there are ‘descriptive studies’ which re- port on the extent and nature of social disclosure with some com- parisons between countries and periods. Second, we have the ‘ex- plicative studies,’ which focus on the potential factors influenci ng levels of social reporting. Third, there are studies on the effect of the practice of social disclosure on various users with an emphasis on market reaction (Bayoud et al., 2012). Our study is descriptive, on the one hand, because it tries to pre- sent the level of social disclosure practice in Tunisia. On the other hand, it is an explanatory study that covers the main factors ex- plaining the level of this practice in Tunisia. Therefore, it is essen- tial to identify and assess factors that may influence the decision of publishing such information in the annual reports of Tunisian companies. For this purpose, through this paper, we try to answer two main research questions: What is the extent of the social disclosure in the annual reports published by the Tunisian companies? What are the main explanatory factors of the practice of social disclosure in the Tunisian context? As for the organization of this paper, we will take the following steps: first, a literature review is developed to lead to the reformu- lation of our research hypotheses. Then, we present the methodo- logical aspect of our paper. Finally, the results generated will be discussed. 2. Literature review and hypotheses develop- ment Through a review of the literature, we will present the explanatory factors of the disclosure of social information and choose those that will be empirically validated in the Tunisian context. For this, it is necessary to formulate the research hypotheses of our research on the different factors explaining the decision and the level of the publication of non financial information in the annual reports of listed companies in Tunisia. We tried to classify our research hypotheses into four categories according to the underlying theories and type of variables which will be tested on the field: 2.1. Hypothesis related to the prospects of legitimacy