Consumers’ willingness to disclose their personal data in e-commerce: A reciprocity-based social exchange perspective

While personal data is invaluable to firms, the drivers of e-commerce customers' willingness to disclose their personal data remain tenuous. Using social exchange theory, we develop a model that explores the impact of consumers' perceived benefit, and relative power, on store trust, in turn driving their willingness to disclose their personal data. We collected our empirical data using a representative online survey, with the results being analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The results corroborate that (a) consumer-perceived e-commerce store trust drives their willingness to disclose their personal data, and (b) perceived e-commerce provider reciprocity outweighs consumers’ perceived data disclosure benefit, suggesting the existence of symbolic (vs. purely instrumental) social exchange.     

Dynamics of the Market for Corporate Tax‐Avoidance Advice*

This paper addresses the debate over aggressive tax‐planning models and analyzes the role of tax consultants. It focuses on the dynamic interaction between innovation and imitation of aggressive tax‐planning products and governmental tax regulation, and it highlights the importance of the length of regulatory lag in comparison with the time it takes the tax‐consulting industry to imitate newly innovated tax‐avoidance products. It reveals an alignment of interests between highly innovative tax‐consulting firms and the governmental tax legislator/regulator. The conclusions are also relevant for the policy debate on mandatory disclosure rules about aggressive tax‐planning models.     

纳税信用评级结果披露与研发投入

以纳税信用评级披露作为一个天然外生冲击,并基于2013—2016年1214家A股上市公司的微观数据构造准自然实验,使用双重差分法系统评估纳税信用评级结果披露对上市公司研发投入的影响。结果发现:纳税信用评级结果披露显著增加了上市公司的研发投入。基于PSM-DID方法的估计结果与上述结论无明显差异。稳健性检验也表明上述结论的正确性。机制检验表明,纳税信用评级结果披露通过降低企业的融资约束,进而促进企业增加研发投入。此外,分样本回归发现纳税信用评级结果披露只能对中小型企业和民营企业的研发投入产生促进作用。     

Is corporate environmental disclosure associated with firm value? A multicountry study of Gulf Cooperation Council firms

Several studies have found a relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and firm value (FV) or accounting profitability. Where environmental disclosure has been the focus, though, only single-country studies have been published, and most of the previous research concerns the developed world. This study examines the association between corporate environmental disclosure (CED) and FV in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, where CED has been increasing from its previous low base. Findings from a multicountry sample of 500 firm-year observations using a 55-item unweighted environmental disclosure index suggest that CED is significantly and positively related to FV as measured by Tobin's Q (TBQ). The relationship is robust to using a weighted version of the disclosure index, individual countries and environmental disclosure subindices. Some evidence of a positive relationship between CED and return on assets is also found, but even where statistically significant, the relationship is much weaker than in the case of TBQ. For empirical and theoretical reasons, we recommend that future studies pay greater attention to market-based proxies, if possible, when investigating the value relevance of CED in both developed and developing countries. Our results suggest that both managers and policymakers in GCC countries should take a positive view of expanded CED.     

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

We tested relationships between employee quit rates and two bundles of human resource (HR) practices that reflect the different interests of the two parties involved in the employment relationship. To understand the boundary conditions for these effects, we examined an external contingency proposed to influence the exchange-based effects of HR practices on subsequent quit rates – the local industry-specific unemployment rate – and an internal contingency proposed to shape employees’ conceptualization of their exchange relationship – their employment status (i.e. full-time, part-time and temporary employment). Analyses of lagged data from over 200 Canadian establishments show that inducement HR practices (e.g. extensive benefits) and performance expectation HR practices (e.g. performance-based bonuses) had different effects on quit rates, and the former effect was moderated by unemployment rate. The effects of HR practices on quit rates did not differ between FT and PT employees, but a different pattern of main and interactive effects was found among temporary workers. These findings suggest that employees’ exchange-based decisions to leave may be less affected by the number of hours they expect to work each week, and more by the number of weeks they expect to work.     

The benefits and implementation of performance transparency: The why and how of letting your customers ‘see through’ your business

While some organizations swear by the benefits of transparency and are eager to learn and implement transparency practices, many managers are still reluctant or even afraid to use them. Our research reveals that only a few innovative companies have taken steps to leverage a potentially useful form of transparency: the provision of accessible and objective information to customers (e.g., sharing unbiased benchmark data, publishing unfiltered customer comments, or providing candid product reviews that may praise but also criticize the company’s products). Our study also shows that many companies remain wary and view greater calls for transparency as a challenge to be managed rather than an opportunity to be traded upon. This is partly due to limited research into the performance benefits of giving customers access to objective information, and lack of practical guidelines on how to actually implement it. This article addresses these shortcomings. First, we investigate whether performance transparency leads to customer outcomes that can be profitable for an organization and, second, we analyze the characteristics of successful transparency initiatives in a wide range of industries. Our research shows that customers exhibit more trust and are willing to pay a premium to deal with transparent businesses. Also, it uncovers seven effective strategies to leverage transparency. This article provides convincing empirical evidence for the benefits of performance transparency and the ways in which management may implement it successfully.     

Community participation in heritage tourism planning: is it too much to ask?

Considering the complications of collecting empirical data on community participation, this study proposes a new methodological approach that departs from the current literature. For the first time, an experimental procedure is adopted to conduct a direct comparison between participatory and non-participatory decision-making in the context of heritage tourism planning. Contrary to previous work, this is the first ex-ante assessment of community participation at a destination with no such prior experience. The analysis relies on behavioural data on choices, deliberation and conflict studied in the context of a controlled collaborative environment. The findings suggest that choices and deliberation between participatory and non-participatory groups exhibit no statistically significant differences although participatory groups were more susceptible to conflict. However, interestingly, conflict was constructive as it increased provisions for heritage goods. Furthermore, intra-group heterogeneity did not always affect collective decisions negatively whereas trust and institutional credibility played a major role in influencing both individual and collective preferences. These findings have important implications for research and policy, opening a novel avenue for the systematic study of participation dynamics to inform the instigation of participatory endeavours.     

Do significant risk warnings in annual reports increase corporate bond credit spreads? Evidence from China

Based on listed companies issuing bonds on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2017, this study analyzes the relationship between significant risk warnings in Chinese companies’ annual reports and corporate bond credit spreads. The main findings are as follows. First, in the Chinese market, “substantial warnings of significant risks” can significantly improve corporate bond credit spreads, reflecting the risk-warning effect; second, state-owned property rights weaken this effect, which only pertains to listed companies with poor risk management and low information quality; third, significant risk warnings increase investors’ heterogeneous beliefs, also affecting credit spreads; and fourth, through textual analysis, it is found that the corporate bond credit spread is greater when the disclosed risk factors are more pessimistic and less similar to those of the previous year. The findings of this paper help to enrich the literature on credit spreads and risk disclosure.     

Beyond symbolic and substantive: Strategic disclosure of corporate environmental information in China

Under increasing regulatory pressure to disclose environmental impacts, corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) is becoming more prevalent. However, the motives for EID and disclosure approaches (i.e., symbolic or substantive) remain controversial. Using a sample of data for 742 listed manufacturing firms in China across 3 years, we provide evidence to show that the level of EID is significantly positively associated with a firm's advertising intensity and that firms in moderately competitive industries have a higher propensity for adopting an EID‐based differentiated strategy than firms in stronger or weaker competitive industries. We also find that firms that are more sensitive to environmental issues strategically understate their environmental impact when directly facing consumers. Our results suggest that the implementation of corporate EID is strategic and that firms have strong market motives, even under regulatory pressure to demonstrate legitimacy. We discuss this study's contributions to research on EID theory and implications for strategic EID management.     

Material weakness disclosures and restatement announcements: The joint and order effects

We examine differences in stock price, option volatility, and litigation reactions to restatement announcements that are associated with a material weakness (MW) disclosure. Contrasted with restatements that are not associated with any MW disclosure, our analyses reveal that firms that announce both a restatement and an associated MW experience significantly more negative market returns, greater implied volatility, and higher likelihood of class action lawsuits. Separating the restatements into timely reporters, where the MW precedes the restatement, and non‐timely reporters, where the MW is concurrent with or follows the restatement, we find that timely reporters experience more negative returns at the time of the restatement, relative to non‐timely reporters, suggesting that investors perceive the early MW disclosure to signal more pervasive control‐related problems. Interestingly, we find that timely and non‐timely reporters are equally likely to be sued, consistent with the argument that wrongdoing (through either a timely or non‐timely MW disclosure) provides stronger grounds for establishing scienter. However, timely reporters appear to secure more favorable litigation outcomes: they face higher likelihood of lawsuit dismissals and pay much lower settlements, compared to non‐timely reporters. Overall, our evidence provides new insights into how market participants incorporate information about internal control weaknesses into their perceptions regarding the economic implications of financial restatements, and financial reporting quality.