Voluntary Disclosure Of Accounting Information Research Under The Investor Protection Perspective

Accounting information disclosure can generally be divided into voluntaryaccounting information disclosure and mandatory accounting information disclosure.Mandatory accounting information disclosure, which is in accordance with generallyaccepted accounting principles and other laws and regulations required by companymanagement layer, must be disclosed in the financial report. Voluntary accountinginformation disclosure is relative to the mandatory accounting information disclosure,and it is in the circumstances that the generally accepted accounting principles and otherlaws and regulations does not claim, but the company management layer supply anddeepen the information of the company’s financial, social responsibility and the futuredevelopment prospects voluntarily. Voluntary accounting information disclosure is ofgreat significance to contribute to eliminating the asymmetry and imperfect of thecapital market information. It is conducive to the realization of fairness and efficiencyof the capital market,so investors are paying more attention to this informationdisclosure. Arthur levitt, the former SEC chairman, pointed out in the context of talkingabout investor protection,“the market can operate in the case of leaving a number offactors, but the market can not be without investors. That is why they put their interestsfirst.” Only the United States values the protection of investors,will investors value theUnited States. This is the purpose which we want to do everything we can to achieve.With the development of securities market, many countries pay more and more attentionto voluntary information disclosure in order to enhance the effectiveness of thesecurities market, and then to effectively protect the interests of investors. The USAmakes a series of policy guidance to encourage the voluntary accounting informationdisclosure of listed companies. The content of the encouragement is very wide, whichinvolves the company’s core ability, environmental protection, social responsibility, etc.American predictive information disclosure system has formed a complete and effectiveinformation disclosure system, and the main characteristic is "safe harbor rule" and"advance warning principle", and the main spirit is "voluntary disclosure". On October21,2003, the Shenzhen stock exchange in our country has issued listed companiesinvestor relations management guide, in which the concept of "voluntary disclosure"was put forward for the first time, indicating that the voluntary information disclosurewas brought into the information disclosure system of our country in the laws andregulations. Compared with the United States, at present, voluntary information disclosure in our country just exists in the government regulatory framework, and therearen’t laws and regulations about voluntary information disclosure. The good news isthat the relevant departments have realized the important role of voluntary informationdisclosure, and actively encourage listed companies to increase the content of voluntarydisclosure.Taking agency theory, information theory and stakeholder theory as theoreticalsupport, and based on relevant research results at home and abroad, this paper adoptsthe method of combining the norms and empirical evidence, in view of the perspectiveof investors’ protection to study the voluntary accounting information disclosure oflisted companies. Learning the level of voluntary information disclosure of listedcompanies in our country at present, and the factors which have influence, then findingout the problems and reasons, finally it puts forward feasible suggestions in order tofurther improve voluntary information disclosure of listed company in our country. First,based on voluntary accounting information disclosure index fundamental mode which iswidely used at home and abroad,combined with the actual situation in our country, thevoluntary accounting information is divided into strategic, extensibility, financialinformation and key non-financial information. According to the revision of the publicoffering of securities company’s information disclosure content and format guidelinesno.2: the annual report of the content and format in2005, and in the perspective ofinvestors’ protection, the index system of voluntary accounting information disclosure isestablished in this article. Then122listed company which are only issuing A shares inShanghai stock exchanges are randomly selected. According to its annual financialreport of listed companies in2009-2011, the voluntary accounting informationdisclosure index (VDI) is calculated. In this paper, seven important factors of thevoluntary information disclosure are chosen as explanatory variables, and company size,profitability, asset debt ratio as control variables. These variables and voluntaryinformation disclosure index are constructed to be multiple regression equation, usingthe least square method for the multivariate linear regression analysis. When carryingon the descriptive statistics, the paper not only describe all the samples, but also furtherdistinguish between government ultimate control, family ultimate control andnon-governmental non-family ultimate control of the listed companies in order toinvestigate the levels of voluntary accounting information disclosure of them moreclearly. The empirical results show that the proportion of management shareholdingand tradable shares, the independent directors proportion and the company size willproduce significant effect on the level of the voluntary accounting information disclosure, while the proportion of the first largest shareholder, board size, the joiningtogether of two jobs, and the consistency of independent directors and listed companies’workplace are not significant. Finally, in order to encourage the listed companies inChina to carry on the voluntary accounting information disclosure, in this paper,improving the Internal corporate governance and the system of voluntary informationdisclosure are put forward.