The intensity of elastically backscattered electrons at the primary electron beam energy 1.9 keV was used to obtain a stereographic map of Au(111) by means of the directional elastic peak electron spectroscopy (DEPES). An experimental result is compared with the theoretical data obtained by using multiple scattering calculations (MS) performed for both not-reconstructed and model-reconstructed clusters. The lateral lattice misfit of the first layer leads to quantitative changes of theoretical intensities showing a sensitivity of DEPES to the short atomic chain axial order. This comparison proves that a main contribution of the experimental contrast originates from a higher background level. Moreover an anisotropy of the inelastic mean free path is discussed in the paper. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.