媒体报道在供应链上的溢出效应研究——企业坏消息隐藏的视角

Spillover Effect of Media Coverage Along Supply Chain: Perspective of Enterprise Bad News Hiding

本文基于媒体作为一种信息传播中介与供应链信息传递的理论基础,考察了媒体对客户的关注如何溢出影响至供应商的坏消息隐藏行为。研究发现:媒体对客户的关注度越高,供应商隐藏的坏消息越少,并且当供应商的机构投资者持股比例越高、分析师跟踪人数越多、存在卖空压力时,媒体对客户的关注越能显著抑制供应商隐藏坏消息。机制分析表明,媒体对客户的关注主要抑制了供应商通过真实盈余管理的手段隐藏坏消息,而基于应计算盈余管理的中介效应不成立。进一步研究发现,首先,媒体对客户的关注度越高,供应商被投资者检索次数越多;其次,媒体对客户的关注与对供应商的关注之间存在补充效应;最后,媒体对客户的关注度越高,供应商的盈余反应系数越大。这些结果共同表明投资者确实会利用媒体报道提供的客户信息,并且客户信息与供应商信息之间具有相互补充验证的效果,使得供应商难以通过操纵盈余的方式隐藏坏消息。本研究对于理解媒体在资本市场上的作用边界,以及投资者如何利用供应链信息防范企业隐藏风险具有重要的理论与实践意义。

In the past few decades, bringing media into the framework of corporate finance for interdisciplinary research has become an enduring hot topic.Based on the important role played by the media in the economy and society, researchers have found that the media can directly or indirectly have a far-reaching impact on the behavior and decision-making of corporate stakeholders or market participants such as shareholders, creditors, management, analysts and auditors.For enterprises, the market relationship with upstream and downstream enterprises in the vertical production chain constitutes the most basic association of economic activities of enterprises, and the upstream suppliers are also important stakeholders of enterprises.However, there is little literature on the impact of media reports on supplier behavior, that is, how the media’s attention to customers affects suppliers’ behavior decisions.From the perspective of enterprises hiding bad news, this paper explores how the media coverages of customers affect suppliers’ bad news hoarding.Theoretically speaking, the customers’ information provided by media coverages have a verification effect on the earnings of supplier enterprises, helps investors understand the real operation of suppliers and timely understand the possible false disclosure in the financial reports of suppliers, which indirectly increases the difficulty and pressure of suppliers to hide bad news through profit fraud.Therefore, this paper expects that the higher the media attention to customers, the less bad news hidden by suppliers.Using hand-collected “supplier-year-customer” database, this paper examines the relationship between media coverages and suppliers’ bad news hoarding.Our empirical result show that:(1) The more the media coverages of customers, the less bad news hidden by suppliers.In addition, suppliers with institutional investors holding more shares, more analysts or short-sale pressure, media coverages of customers are more likely to inhibit suppliers from hiding bad news;(2) Mechanism analysis shows that the media coverages of customers mainly inhibits suppliers from hiding bad news by means of real earnings management, rather than accrual earning management;(3) Further research show that, firstly, the more the media coverages of customers, the more often the suppliers are searched by investors;secondly, There is a supplementary effect between the media coverages of customers and suppliers;finally, the more the media coverages of customers, the greater the earnings response coefficient of the suppliers.Together, these results imply that investors will indeed use the customer information provided by media, and there is a complementary verification effect between customer information and supplier information, which makes it difficult for suppliers to hide bad news by manipulating earnings.Based on the above results, this paper has following contributions: Firstly, existing literatures have explored how media coverage affect behavior and decision-making of corporate stakeholders or market participants such as shareholders, creditors, management, analysts and auditors.this paper empirically tests how the media’s attention to customers affects the suppliers, expanding the function boundary of media in the capital market.Secondly, it has been found that management, shareholders, analysts, auditors and banks will make full use of customer information, including customers’ accounting digital information, text information in annual reports and so on.this paper makes us see the role of media coverages in the information transmission of supply chain, and further enriches the literature in this regard.Thirdly, based on the theoretical foundation that customers are the source of enterprise profits and the realistic basis of successive cases of stock price crash caused by inflated profits of Listed Companies in China, this paper deeply discusses the internal mechanism of media attention to customers and suppliers’ hiding bad news from the perspective of enterprise earnings.