A Study On Financial Information Disclosure Strategy And Motivation Of Listed Companies Catering To Investors Sentiment

As the two key issues affecting the efficiency of the securities market,investor sentiment and the quality of information disclosure of listed companies have attracted great attention in their respective research fields—behavioral finance and financial accounting.In recent years,the "drastic ups and downs" of A-share has shown that the mispricing problem caused by irrational factors such as investor sentiment is more serious in the market.Meanwhile,the poor quality of information disclosure of listed companies has always been a chronic disease of A-share market.Therefore,it has great practical significance and profound theoretical foundation by bringing the above two problems into one analytical framework.Based on the catering theory of behavioral finance,this paper makes full use of the combination of theoretical analysis and empirical test,and makes a comprehensive and systematic study on the impact of investor sentiment on the financial information disclosure strategy of listed companies in the asymmetric information environment.Specifically,from the two different perspectives of earnings management strategy under mandatory disclosure regulation and performance express disclosure strategy under non-mandatory requirement,this paper deeply analyzes the influence mechanism of investor sentiment on the disclosure behavior and behavior motivation of listed companies,and takes A-share listed companies as samples to provide cross-sectional evidence to support the above theoretical logic.The theoretical analysis and empirical conclusions of this thesis consistently show that rational managers try to cater to changes in investor sentiment through financial information disclosure strategies,but there are certain differences in the application of two different strategies—earnings management and voluntary disclosure.When investor sentiment is high and they have a stronger preference for "good news",enterprises generally cater through the growing positive earnings management.In the use of voluntary disclosure strategies,profitable companies may be more proactive in disclosing performance express,while loss companies prefer not to disclose performance express to avoid dampen the high sentiment of investors.When the investor sentiment is low,the company often compensates for the ?deficit? caused by previous earnings management or prepares for the future positive earnings management through negative earnings management.At the same time,the possibility of companies catering to investor sentiment through voluntary disclosure of performance express is reduced.Loss companies will no longer have the pressure of ?discouragement? and their performance express is now more likely to be disclosed.The above conclusions are utterly in agreement with the expectations of the ?catering theory?.In addition,this article's empirical conclusions also indicate that the above earnings management strategy of managers are not influenced by their own sentiments,but is a rational coping behavior based on changes in market environment.Further research on the catering strategy of earnings management also finds that: fistly,the listed companies with "strong strength" use earnings management strategy to cater to investor sentiment to a higher degree,and these companies have the characteristics of strong risk resistance and development ability,high maturity and state-owned holding;secondly,during the period when investor sentiment is the highest,the catering behavior of earnings management is the most obvious;thirdly,compared with the earnings management strategies of listed companies on SME and GEM,the catering characteristics of strategies of main board listed companies are more significant.After verifying the impact of investor sentiment on earnings management and the voluntary disclosure of performance express separately,the thesis make further analysis on whether listed companies use two different strategies to cater to investor sentiment at the same time.The research results show that earnings management acts as a partial intermediary in the process of investor sentiment affecting the disclosure behavior of performance express.To put it more specifically,for profitable companies,high investor sentiment will enhance the possibility of disclosing performance express,and may also encourage them to cater by increasing earnings,however,some of them may combine the earnings management with the disclosure strategy of performance express,proactively disclosing the performance express afte r increasing earnings to improve the catering effect(at this time,increasing earnin gs is the logical premise of voluntary disclosure of the performance express);in terms of the loss companies,high investor sentiment can directly inhibit the disclosure of performance express,but some companies still hope to cater to investor sentiment by the combination of positive earnings management and advance disclosure of performance express.However the indirect positive effect of high investor sentiment on the disclosure of performance express by promoting the positive earnings management behavior of the company will be suppressed by a stronger direct inhibition,which makes it difficult to be observed directly.Investor sentiment not only can affect the information disclosure behavior of listed enterprises,but also may cause changes in their behavioral motives.However,the influence of investor sentiment on the behavioral motives of company's earnings management and voluntary disclosure is not consistent.The empirical conclusions of this thesis illustrate that the earnings management behavior of A-share listed enterprises generally has information transmission motives.With the rising market sentiment and the induction of investors' imprudent behavior characteristics,the company's information transmission motivation is weakened while the tendency of opportunism motivation is enhanced.In the extreme cases(investor sentiment is particularly high),earnings management may fully demonstrate opportunism motivation.On the other side,being consistent with the signal transmission theory,the voluntary disclosure behavior of performance express of listed enterprises in the A-share main board has a definite signal transmission motivation,and it tends to transmit a good signal of future performance in general.Due to investors' instinctive suspicion for the unaudited performance information of listed enterprises and the ?original intention? of voluntary disclosure to alleviate information asymmetry,high investor sentiment would not enhance the tendency of opportunism motivation for performance express,but will strengthen its signal transmission motive of delivering "good news".The contribution of this thesis mainly lies in three aspects: firstly,based on the relatively fragmented literature results in the early stage,it constructs a theoretical research framework of investor sentiment affecting the financial information disclosure behavior of listed enterprises and provides relatively complete empirical evidence from the perspectives of mandatory and voluntary disclosure,especially from the perspective of comprehensive use of strategies,it also verifies the mediating role of earnings management in the process of investor sentiment affecting performance express;secondly,it enriches the research literature of the motivation of information disclosure for listed enterprises,has earlier verified the non opportunistic motivation of earnings management behavior and the signaling motivation o f voluntary disclosure behavior of performance express in A-share companies;thirdly,from the perspective of the variability of manager's decision-making motivation,it expands the research idea of the relationship between investor sentiment and the behavior decision of listed enterprises,and the empirical evidence of the influence of investor sentiment on the corporate information disclosure behavioral motivation is provided.The conclusions of the study will help market participants to understand the market behavior and its impact more deeply,which will further promote investors to make rational investment decisions and listed enterprises to reflect on the appropriateness of disclosure strategies and regulatory authorities to make more effective guidance and regulation of the market.