Résumé
The objective of this doctoral research is to show that environmental information is likely to contribute to a better evaluation of the total value of the company. However, doubts subsist about the quality of the information voluntarily published by the managers. By guaranteeing the reliability of environmental information, the environmental audit is supposed to be able to contribute to their credibility and to support their taking into account in the decisions of financial investment. It is then proposed as a governance mechanism aiming at reducing the conflicts of agency between the managers and the users of information. An experimental design was carried out on a sample of financial analysts, in the objective to analyze the impact of non-audited or audited environmental information, on their recommendations of investment. It appears that the diffusion of positive environmental information favourably influences the choices of investment, but the impact of the environmental audit is more complex and seems to depend on the level of opinion stated by the auditor. Particularly, it seems that propensity to invest in a company which carries out an audited environmental reporting is all the more low, which the level of reliability attested by the auditor is weak. This result, whose tendency was confirmed by the realization of two studies of association, suggests that efforts must be carried out to improve the intelligibility of the certificates of insurance, because the interest of the audit depends on the accessibility of its conclusions to the greatest number.