Research On The Factors Influencing Corporate Social Disclosure

Corporate social disclosure is the process in which information is provided for the purpose of discharge firm's social responsibility and the means by which management communicate with constituents in order to influence their views of the enterprise. In the macro-context of building a harmonious society, facing the wave of economic globalization and achieving sustainable development, the enterprise, as the key player of socioeconomic development, its implementation of social responsibility is drawing increasing attention. Hence, the study of corporate social disclosure is urgent.The paper first defines the nature of the enterprise as well as the definition and content of corporate social responsibility, and introduces corporate social disclosure system and model so as to clear the basic concepts of the study. Then, the hypotheses, combined with the theoretical perspectives, are developed. Furthermore, based on the annual reports of electricity, coal and water industry, food and beverage industry together with petrochemical and plastic industry over the period of 2003-2005, corporate social disclosure index is designed to measure the level of reported social information, the status quo of corporate social disclosure, thereby, is analyzed. Finally, this article, through multivariate analysis, explores the influence factors of Chinese corporate social disclosure, and comes up with some recommendations for the improvement of it accordingly.As shown by the study, Chinese corporate social disclosure with the low standard is still at the primary stage; the betterment of external governance, the increase of company size and profits are beneficial to corporate social disclosure; enterprises with poor shareholder profitability tend to disclose more information on social responsibility to maintain investor confidence in the long-term value of companies; different attributes of industry will lead to corporate social disclosure discrepancies; Chinese banks as the main creditor doesn't act as the effective interest or pressure group for social disclosure improvement; the independent director system in China has a negative impact on corporate social disclosure, and companies in our country, at present, are in need of a sound internal governance system to promote corporate social disclosure.