The Importance of Non-financial Information of Public Sector Entities - Evidence from Croatia

Public sector entities face many challenges and changes with regard to the information needs of different information users. Non-financial reporting is one of the ways to deal with the changes and new requirements of information users. Against this background, a survey was conducted in Croatia among users and producers of reports, primarily to determine whether the respondents were familiar with non-financial reporting. The aim was to find out which non-financial information users and accountants consider to be the most important and what their attitude towards non-financial reporting is. In other words, whether they consider the introduction of non-financial reporting necessary and whether users need non-financial information. As there is no developed framework for non-financial reporting in the public sector, the non-financial information proposed by the International Integrated Reporting Framework was used. A quantitative survey was conducted to collect data. The survey was conducted in the form of a questionnaire in the Republic of Croatia among various information users and accountants. The research conducted in the Republic of Croatia leads to the conclusion that non-financial reporting in public sector entities is not developed and that knowledge about non-financial reporting is weak among all groups of respondents. On the other hand, information users recognize the need to prepare non-financial reports in the future, which can be seen as support for the implementation of non-financial reporting.