The Influence Of The Disclosure Of Senior Executives’ Photos In The Company’s Annual Report On Investors’ Attention And Behavioral Intention

Annual report is an important channel for listed companies to disclose information,which can alleviate the problem of information asymmetry between companies and investors.The information disclosed in the annual report can be divided into financial information and non-financial information.Many studies have proved the usefulness of financial information for decision-making.At the same time,the non-financial information independently disclosed by enterprises,as a supplement to mandatory disclosure,can also provide important decision-making information for investors.With the improvement of visualization and readability of the annual report,the amount of image information keeps increasing,among which the photos of company executives are important image types.As photos are an important part of executives’ personal privacy,the company needs to weigh the direct and indirect costs of disclosure.Only when the perceived benefits exceed the costs,will they make the decision of voluntary disclosure.The photos of senior executives reflect the innate feature of the executive’s appearance.It belongs to the"reductionist theory"of psychology to study the behavior of senior executives from the innate factors at the lower level.Complex social traits such as personality,talent and status can be inferred from the overall appearance.Previous studies have explored the relationship between executive appearance and financial behaviors,and confirmed that the "first impression" information obtained from executive appearance can make inferences about personal traits,and provide clues for the evaluation of corporate performance,which plays an extremely important role in the value judgment of small and medium-sized investors.However,the specific impact on investors caused by the photos of executives disclosed in the company’s annual report has not been studied.Therefore,this paper will simulate the real investment situation through behavioral experiments,and combine with the eye movement tracking technology,to provide empirical evidence for the research on the influence of the disclosure of senior executives’ photos in the company’s annual report on investors’attention and behavioral intention.The results show that the disclosure of senior executives’ photos in the company’s annual report will affect the distribution of investors’ attention,significantly increasing investors’ attention to the part of this year’s performance,significantly reducing investors’ attention to the part of the outlook,but no significant impact on the dividend.At the same time,the disclosure of senior executives’ photos will affect the behavioral willingness of investors,enhancing their willingness to invest and recommendation,and increasing the amount of invest money.There is a certain correlation between investors’ attention and some behavioral intention.At the same time,the influence varies with the characteristics of investors such as gender and financial background.The disclosure of executive photos has a more significant influence on women and investors with strong financial background.Finally,combined with the research conclusions and the actual situation,the corresponding reference suggestions are put forward from the three perspectives of listed companies,regulators and investors.