Do features that associate managers with a message magnify investors’ reactions to narrative disclosures?

H. Scott Asay, Robert Libby and Kristina M. Rennekamp

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2018, vol. 68-69, 1-14

Abstract: We test whether investors react more strongly to narrative disclosures when the CEO's presence or association with the message is more salient in the disclosure, holding all other information constant. In our first experiment, we manipulate whether a CEO uses more personal pronouns (e.g., “I” and “our” rather than “the company” and “its”) in an assertion about whether the firm is “likely” or “unlikely” to win a lawsuit. We find investors' beliefs about the outcome of the lawsuit align more closely with the CEO's assertion when the disclosure contains more personal pronouns. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulate the extent of the CEO's association with the message and whether the disclosure contains good or bad news. In the second experiment, we manipulate whether a disclosure uses more personal pronouns. In the third experiment, we manipulate whether a disclosure does or does not contain a photo of the CEO. Both manipulations of association with the message lead to stronger reactions from investors in between-subjects tests. That is, when news is good (bad), including either more personal pronouns or the CEO's photo leads to more positive (negative) assessments of firm value. We also find that, within-subjects, both manipulations are perceived as indicating greater association with the message, but participants do not expect an effect on investment evaluations. In a fourth experiment, we provide additional evidence that personal pronoun usage affects investor reactions by increasing the perceived credibility of the disclosure.

Keywords: Language; Voluntary disclosure; Investor judgment; Plain english (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368218300539
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:68-69:y:2018:i::p:1-14

DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2018.02.003

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Organizations and Society is currently edited by Christopher Chapman

More articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().