实地调研抑制了上市公司的选择性披露吗?

Does Field Research Inhibit the Selective Disclosure of Listed Companies?

目前关于实地调研经济后果的研究主要关注其信息效应,而鲜有文献关注实地调研对上市公司披露行为的影响。对此,本文以2007—2019年的上市公司为样本,就实地调研这一私下沟通方式如何影响公开披露行为进行探讨。实证研究发现,实地调研会导致公司的选择性信息披露,即向上进行业绩调整、减少年报风险信息披露。经机制研究发现,实地调研通过提高分析师关注度和媒体关注度,增加上市公司所面临的市场压力,从而导致其进行选择性信息披露。并且,管理层在其中扮演着重要角色,当高管薪酬越高时,他们更有动机进行壕沟防御,这种选择性信息披露行为也越明显。此外,进一步研究还表明,实地调研会影响到公司的会计稳健性和会计信息可比性,导致公司与市场的信息不对称水平上升。上述结论不仅丰富了实地调研和信息披露的相关研究,而且为投资者加深对公司信息披露的理解、政府职能部门强化会计数字信息和文本信息选择性披露的监管提供新的视角。

At present,the Chinese capital market is generally in the emerging and transitional stage,and the problem of information asymmetry between accounting information providers and general users is still widespread,leading to the inefficiency and systemic risks of capital market resource allocation.Private communication and public disclosure,as the main methods for market participants to obtain company information,have received widespread attention for their role in reducing information asymmetry in the capital market.The academic community has also conducted rich and detailed discussions on this.They find that private communication is a powerful supplement to public disclosure and the two are playing active roles together in strengthening the normal information transmission mechanism of the market,reducing the company’s systemic financial risks,and helping market participants make correct investment judgments and decisions.However,there is still a lack of research on the impact of private communication on public disclosure.The discussion of this issue can not only enrich the related research on private communication and information disclosure,but also analyze the motivation of the information disclosure behavior of listed companies,and provide new ideas for alleviating the information asymmetry of the capital market.This paper uses 2007-2019 listed companies in China as a research sample to examine the impact of field investigation,a private communication method,on company information disclosure.The research finds that:(1)Field investigations will lead to selective information disclosure by companies,that is,upward performance adjustments and reduction of risk information disclosure in annual report.(2)The mechanism research finds that field investigation can increase the market pressure faced by listed companies by increasing analyst attention and media attention,thus leading to the selective information disclosure.(3)Executives play important roles in the selective disclosure.When they have higher salary,they are more motivated to conduct trench defense and their selective information disclosure behaviors are also more obvious.(4)Further research shows that field investigations will affect the company’s accounting conservatism and the comparability of accounting information,leading to an increase in the level of information asymmetry between the company and the market.On the basis of existing research,the possible contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects.First of all,it enriches the economic consequences of field investigation literature.Existing research has verified the governance effect of field research mainly from the perspectives of market reaction and analyst forecasts,while this paper innovatively discusses the topic from the perspective of company selective disclosure.The results show that field research will lead to selective information disclosure by companies,that is,upward performance adjustments and reduction of risk information disclosure in annual report,thus confirming the pressure effect of field research.Secondly,from the perspectives of accounting information comparability and accounting information conservatism,it shows that this"blind-eye"type of information whitewashing behavior will not only disturb the audiovisual,but also distort the normal information transmission mechanism of the market and aggravate the company’s information asymmetry.Finally,it confirms that executives may make discretionary choices regarding the public disclosure of information driven by market pressure.This helps to deepen the understanding of investors on company information disclosure,and provides a new perspective for government functional departments to strengthen the supervision of selective disclosure of accounting digital information and text information.