Beyond Web Log Files: Assessing Stakeholder Interest in Pillar 3 Disclosures through Information-Seeking Behaviour
This study proposes and validates a scalable methodology that combines multilingual NLP keyword extraction with Google Trends data to assess stakeholder interest in Basel Pillar 3 disclosures across the Visegrad Four countries, offering a practical alternative to traditional web log file analysis.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the world of banking, trust is the most valuable currency, yet it is often the hardest to see. To keep this trust alive and prevent financial systems from collapsing, international regulators have established a set of rules known as the Basel Accords. Think of these rules as a three-legged stool designed to keep banks steady. One leg ensures banks have enough money in reserve to survive a crisis. Another leg involves government supervisors checking the bank's work. The third leg, known as Pillar 3, relies on the public itself. It requires banks to publish detailed reports about their risks and finances, operating on the belief that if investors and depositors can see the truth, they will pressure banks to behave responsibly. However, a critical question remains: do people actually read these reports? For decades, researchers have tried to answer this by peeking into the digital footprints left behind when users visit bank websites. But this method is like trying to study a forest by counting every single leaf that falls on a specific path; it is incredibly difficult, requires permission from the forest owner, and only tells you about that one spot.
A team of researchers from universities in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland has found a new way to look at the forest without needing to walk every path. Instead of asking banks for their private visitor logs, they turned to the public search engine. They wanted to know if people were actively looking for the specific information that banks are required to publish. To do this, they focused on the Visegrad Four region, a group of four Central European nations: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The researchers first took the actual text from hundreds of bank reports, such as annual reports and documents about covered bonds. Using a computer program designed to understand language, they pulled out the most important phrases that describe the content of these documents. They then translated these phrases into the local languages of the four countries. Finally, they checked how often people in each country searched for these specific phrases over a period of fifteen years, from 2007 to 2022. This approach allowed them to measure interest without ever needing to see a single private record from a bank.
The results revealed a clear and rhythmic pattern in how people seek financial information. Interest in these reports is not constant; it rises and falls with the calendar year. The researchers found that people search for this information most intensely during the first and fourth quarters of the year. This timing makes perfect sense, as these are the periods when banks release their annual accounts and when investors are most likely to be reviewing their portfolios. The study also showed that not all reports are created equal. Documents related to annual reports and covered bonds attracted the most consistent attention, while general information about the bank itself drew far less interest. This suggests that stakeholders are not just browsing randomly; they are looking for specific, high-stakes data that helps them make decisions about money and risk.
Perhaps the most striking discovery was the difference between the four countries. While the seasonal pattern of interest was similar across the region, the volume of searches varied significantly. Poland consistently showed the highest level of interest in these disclosures, followed by the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. The researchers suggest this difference is likely due to Poland having a more developed capital market and a higher level of financial literacy among its population. In a country where more people are invested in the stock market and familiar with financial reporting, the demand for transparency is naturally higher. The study confirmed that these search trends are not random noise but are statistically significant, meaning they represent real changes in human behavior rather than chance.
This new method offers a powerful alternative to the old way of doing things. Previously, understanding stakeholder interest required access to proprietary data that banks were often unwilling to share, along with massive amounts of computing power to process terabytes of log files. By using only publicly available search data, the researchers created a tool that is faster, cheaper, and easier to scale across different regions. The findings align closely with what earlier, more difficult studies had found, proving that search data is a reliable mirror of how people engage with financial transparency. For regulators and bank leaders, this means they can now monitor the effectiveness of their disclosures in real-time and across borders, ensuring that the information they publish is actually reaching the people who need it. The study concludes that while the content of the reports matters, the timing of their release and the financial culture of the region play equally vital roles in whether that information is truly seen and used.
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