Website Sustainability Disclosure, Government Size, and Human Development: Evidence from Indonesian Local Governments

Abstract

The provision of sustainability information on a local government's website plays a crucial role in facilitating communication, engagement, and collaboration in the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study aims to evaluate the level of website sustainability disclosure (WSD) in Indonesian district/ city local governments and examine the influence of government size and human development (HD) on WSD. The number of samples was determined using Slovin's formula and selected randomly using an online randomizing tool. The final number of samples is 228 primary official websites of the Indonesian local governments. The level of WSD was determined using the content analysis method and scoring method (0 = undisclosed item, 1 = limited disclosure, 2 = fully disclosed). Using the multiple regression method, this study revealed that WSD in Indonesian local governments is still far from expected and cannot be a decision aid to evaluate and compare SDG achievement. Government size, proxied by total budgeted income, does not influence WSD, while HD, proxied by the human development index, has a positive and significant impact on WSD. Thus, this study calls for extending and improving sustainability disclosure in Indonesian local governments, particularly in social and environmental areas.1