The Impact Of Long Series Of Information Disclosure To Non-Professional Investors’ Belief Revision

With the expansion of the scale of business of listed companies,the increasing demand of investors for information makes the frequency of information disclosure gradually accelerating.More and more researches have also found that information disclosure mode and information disclosure order are factors that affect information disclosure and have important influence on investors’ cognitive judgment and investment behavior.In practice,the information disclosure system is constantly improving.Under this background,research on non-professional investors is still rare.Based on the Belief Adjustment Model,Cognitive Fit Theory and Serial Position Effect,this study explores the impact of non-professional investors’ belief revision on the level of information disclosure mode and information disclosure order.By designing a 2×2between-subjects experiment,the degree of change in valuation judgments of non-professional investors under the four experimental conditions of the combination of long series of information and short series of information,good news and bad news was examined.At the same time,in order to collect data of questionnaires,graduate students of accounting majors are used as representatives of non-professional investors.Finally,test the hypothesis to prove that the original hypothesis is true.The experimental results are consistent with the conclusion of the literature review.The experimental results show that the long series of information is more suitable for the non-professional investor’s cognitive than the short series of information which alleviates non-professional investor’s cognitive overload problem.Compared to good news,bad news can cause non-professional investors to feel disgusted with the fear of loss and risk,so it will produce more revision.Further analysis also found that at the "inflection point" where good news and bad news alternated,non-professional investor’ belief revision would be more significant.Therefore,it is recommended that the standard setters should establish a timely,open and transparent information disclosure system,and also encourage listed companies to hire professional intermediary agencies to independently rate their statements and issue professional evaluation reports to guide non-professional investors to make rational decisions.At the same time,non-professional investors should also pay attention to their cognitive bias which will cause behavioral deviations.They should also aware that the listed company will manipulate information release by changing the information disclosure mode and information disclosure order.In addition,listed companies should take theinitiative to assume social responsibilities and conduct strict self-inspection of their information disclosure activities to reduce the occurrence of non-compliance disclosure events.