The Determination Factors Of Voluntary Information Disclosure

Information is an important tool for market competition, and it has animportant influence on modern economic life. With the development ofmarket-oriented process, information disclosure has gradually become animportant way for effective communication between enterprises andstakeholders. The information disclosure system of listed companies is a strongbasis for investors, creditors and regulators to make the right decisions. At thesame time, the development and growth of the stakeholder theory makes theinterests of shareholders are no longer the only goal for enterprises to pursue. Asa member of society, companies have to consider the reasonable and legitimateexpectations of the various stakeholders’, and its development and decisions arealso subject to the stakeholders.This thesis selects154companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchangeas the sample, from the perspective of the stakeholder to exams empirically thedeterminants of voluntary disclosure in2010annual reports of these listed firms,adopting foreign scholars’ research methods to establish the voluntaryinformation disclosure index. After establishing the disclosure index, a scoringsheet was developed to assess the extent of voluntary disclosure. Through thecombing of theories related to voluntary disclosure, based on the stakeholders’perspective, the thesis proposes assumptions from three aspects of the public,investors and senior managers, examining empirically the influence of corporatesocial responsibility, quality of accounting information, the scale of CertifiedPublic Accountants, executive compensation and executive stock ownership tothe level of voluntary information disclosure in China. The results show that thelisted companies in China have a lower voluntary disclosure level and only afew corporates disclosure CSR Report. On the aspect of voluntary disclosure,this is the first empirical test of the relationship between the level of voluntarydisclosure and corporate social responsibility. We find out it is positively relatedto the CSR and the executive compensation, but significant negatively related tothe proportion of executive stock ownership. There is no evidence shows thatthe level of voluntary disclosure is related to the quality of accountinginformation and the scale of Certified Public Accountants.