Research On The Impact Of Executive Implicit Incentives On The R&D Investment Of Listed Enterprises Under Positive Media Coverage

With the global outbreak of COVID-19,in addition to traditional measures such as expanding exports and stimulating domestic consumption,China must also actively promote innovation-led economic development to win the battle against the epidemic.From the micro perspective,innovation is the lasting power of enterprise development,and increasing R&D investment can promote enterprises to carry out innovation activities better.However,in the context of principal-agent problems,senior executives will reduce R&D investment decisions based on their own interests due to high risks,uncertain and slow returns from R&D investment.To promote senior executives to make innovative decisions and improve their willingness to invest in R&D,it is essential to formulate an effective incentive mechanism.In recent years,in addition to explicit incentives such as equity incentive and salary incentive,implicit incentives with hidden and flexible characteristics also play an important role in corporate governance.Whether implicit incentives can improve the level of corporate R&D investment will become the focus of this paper.This paper takes A-share listed companies in China from 2014 to 2019 as the research sample to study the single effect and interaction effect between the three implicit incentives of executive perk incentives,promotion incentives and reputation incentives on enterprise R&D investment.And then introducing the positive media reports of enterprises as the moderating variable.It also analyzes the influence of industry factors,property rights and characteristics of executive team on the research results.The results show that executive perk incentives,promotion incentives and reputation incentives have positive effects on R&D investment.In the interaction effect of R&D investment,executive perk incentives and promotion incentives are in substitution relationship,executive perk incentives and reputation incentives are in complementary relationship,executive perk incentives,promotion incentives and reputation incentives are in complementary relationship,executive promotion incentives and reputation incentives are not significant relationship.Overall,in addition to inhibiting executive perk incentives,positive media reports can promote the effect of other implicit incentives on R&D investment.From the perspective of heterogeneity analysis,the implementation of executive implicit incentive plan in high-tech enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises has a better promotion effect on R&D investment,and the age and tenure of executive team will affect the design of executive implicit incentive combination plan.This study enriches incentive and innovation theory,provides reference for enterprises to optimize the design of implicit incentive contracts for executives,and has important practical significance for enterprises to improve R&D investment level.In terms of management suggestions,firstly,enterprises should formulate an innovation-oriented assessment system for senior executives.Secondly,it is necessary to optimize the combination of implicit incentive measures and exploit the advantages of different implicit incentive measures.Secondly,enterprises should pay attention to reputation management,and adopt appropriate implicit incentive policies for senior executives to improve the level of R&D investment by the moderating effect of positive media reports.Finally,implicit incentive schemes should be formulated according to the characteristics of the enterprise and senior management team.