Retail shareholders are increasingly going online, according to the results of a survey released today by the Australasian Investor Relations Association (AIRA).

The 2010 "Retail investors' use of electronic communications and social media" survey was run with the assistance of the Australian Shareholders' Association and the New Zealand Shareholders' Association.

AIRA chief executive Ian Matheson said his organisation is seeing strong growth in the number of retail investors using online sources for investment information.

In the survey, 54 per cent of retail investor respondents said that electronic communication had become more important or much more important to them in the last 12 months.

"Retail investors' have higher expectations of listed entity electronic communications than when we last conducted this survey in 2007. Ease of access to information and timely delivery of email notifications are important," said Mr Matheson.

The survey respondents said the most important electronic communication vehicles for investor information are the ASX website and listed company websites in line with the 2007 survey findings.

More than 70 per cent are happy to receive annual report/ shareholder reviews exclusively via email and said the section they are most likely to read is the financial report.

Increasing demand for mobile access for websites, a much higher number of investors are using smartphones than when the survey was conducted in 2007, AIRA said.