| Food safety is a major livelihood and development issue,as well as the first strategic task of comprehensive rural revitalization.China’s gradual entry into the stage of high-quality development in the new era poses a serious challenge to the traditional food safety governance model,while the digital transformation of enterprises will further bring about the diversification of information disclosure methods,and the institutionalization of social co-governance is used to ensure equal,communicative,and adequate information disclosure,which promotes the balance of the relationship between the government,the market,and the society in the field of food safety risk governance.Under the digital governance of food safety risk,voluntary food safety information disclosure by enterprises can alleviate the information asymmetry in the food market,which is conducive to enhancing the effectiveness of food safety risk governance,and it is also the key to consolidating the “big food concept” to ensure the high quality of food supply in China.With the continuous development of digital information technology,on the one hand,the information production and transmission channels have undergone profound changes,which not only strengthens the scope and transparency of information disclosure,but also significantly improves the effectiveness of food safety supervision,thus creating a fairer,more open and more transparent market competition environment;on the other hand,it also helps to realize the digitization of the operation and management of the agricultural products processing enterprises and the intellectualization of the agricultural products processing,and promotes the flow of information resources within the system.On the other hand,it also helps realize the digital management of agricultural processing enterprises and the intelligentization of agricultural products processing,promotes the flow of information resources in the system,extends the agricultural industry chain and value chain,and promotes the process of agricultural modernization.At the same time,digital empowerment improves the transparency and effectiveness of enterprise information,enhances the convenience of enterprises in disclosing information to the outside world,plays the signaling role of voluntary information disclosure,makes the public understand the current status of enterprise operation and future development potential in a timely manner,and plays an important role in improving the information environment of the capital market.Therefore,voluntary food safety information disclosure,as an important information carrier of food safety information governance,can convey information about the characteristics of enterprise development,alleviate the degree of information asymmetry,and solve the “black box dilemma” faced by food safety regulatory agencies.Based on this,clarifying the behavioral logic and influence mechanism of voluntary food safety information disclosure of listed enterprises in the agricultural products processing category,and clarifying the effect of the influence of voluntary food safety information disclosure,are of great value in opening up the information communication channels of multiple interests and empowering agricultural products processing enterprises to achieve sustainable development and high-quality development.The digital economy has alleviated the problem of information asymmetry between stakeholders at the source level,which is specifically manifested in the significant improvement of the readability,effectiveness and quantity of information disclosure of agricultural products processing enterprises.As a policy response to the real problem,relevant state departments have successively issued a series of regulations such as“Measures for the Administration of Information Disclosure of Listed Companies” and“Food Safety Law”,which play an important role in standardizing the behavior of corporate information disclosure and creating a good information ecology.However,at the information transmission stage,agricultural product processing enterprises may cover up“bad news”,exaggerate positive news,and manipulate or modify food safety information disclosure behavior to obtain good external evaluation,which makes it difficult for consumers to identify the real food safety status of agricultural product processing enterprises,and raises general concerns..Therefore,in the digital communication environment where information is of various forms but of varying quality,and the value of information is confusing and difficult to discern,how to give full play to the value-creating role of voluntary food safety information disclosure by identifying noisy information? What are the micro-mechanisms and internal logic for establishing high-quality disclosure of food safety information by agricultural processing enterprises?In view of this,on the basis of integrating relevant academic achievements at home and abroad,this study follows the analysis framework of “indicator measurement-logical motivation-impact effect” based on signal transmission theory,stakeholder theory,legitimacy theory and externality theory,and selects agricultural product processing enterprises listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2008 to 2022 as the research object.This paper focuses on the spatio-temporal evolution and relative morphological characteristics of voluntary food safety information disclosure,as well as the internal root and mechanism of voluntary food safety information disclosure.Based on the perspective of enterprise subsidies and penalties,the paper identifies the impact of voluntary food safety information disclosure,and provides reference suggestions for the sustainable and high-quality development of agricultural product processing enterprises.The overall structure of this paper is as follows: First,the development process of food safety supervision policy and the trend of voluntary food safety information are sorted out,and the voluntary food safety information disclosure index system is constructed;Secondly,from the two competitive perspectives of signal transmission theory and legitimacy theory,the fixed effect model and the regulatory effect model are used to explore the “U” type nonlinear characteristics,action mechanism and heterogeneous effect of food safety status on the motivation of voluntary food safety information disclosure.Thirdly,evolutionary game theory was used to build a dynamic evolutionary game model of equilibrium strategies of agricultural product processing enterprises,consumers and governments,analyze the dynamic evolution process of the three strategies and their game equilibrium strategies,and conduct numerical simulation to explore the realization mechanism of the voluntary food safety information disclosure governance model.Secondly,the effects of voluntary food safety information disclosure and its internal mechanism are systematically discussed from the perspective of enterprise subsidies by using fixed effect model and regulatory effect model.Finally,through the presentation of two typical cases,the causal mechanism and change process of the research object are revealed,the logical mechanism and specific path of voluntary food safety information disclosure inhibiting corporate punishment are clarified,and the continuous improvement of the quality of voluntary food safety information disclosure is promoted.According to problem-oriented research logic and research perspective,the main research conclusions of this study are as follows:First,food safety has gradually changed from quality safety to nutrition safety.From the temporal characteristics of voluntary food safety information disclosure,voluntary food safety information disclosure shows a trend of increasing fluctuation in the temporal sequence,and this phenomenon has a trend of accelerating.Among them,the distribution difference among different industries is significant,and the regional difference shows a trend of decreasing fluctuation over time.From the perspective of the spatial evolution characteristics of voluntary food safety information disclosure,the overall spatial distribution presents significant features such as “north-south differentiation”,“east high and west low” and “information mismatch”.It is worth noting that the Moran index was used to analyze the correlation and agglomeration of the voluntary food safety information disclosure level in various provinces,and it was found that the number of “high-high”agglomeration increased and the number of “low-low” agglomeration decreased during the sample time span,that is,the “synergistic” provinces showed an upward trend and the“synergistic” provinces showed a downward trend.Moreover,from the perspective of the relative morphological characteristics of voluntary food safety information disclosure,it can be divided into four quadrants,namely,the continuous maintenance stage,the flexible adjustment stage,the secondary improvement stage and the key improvement stage,and the regional differences are obvious.Second,there is a U-shaped relationship between food safety status and voluntary food safety information disclosure.Based on the double scenario of data information and big food view,the underlying logic of food safety status and voluntary food safety information disclosure is analyzed from the perspective of “confession” or “justification”.The performance and results of voluntary information disclosure are regarded as “signal transmission” and “legal debate” respectively,and the decision-making mechanism of voluntary food safety information disclosure in agricultural product processing enterprises is discussed under the balance and imbalance of the two mechanisms.The results show that the influence of food safety status on voluntary food safety information disclosure presents a U-shaped nonlinear feature,which is particularly obvious in the strategic concept,and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests.The extended analysis shows that performance pressure has a certain moderating effect on the influence of food safety status on voluntary food safety information disclosure.The root cause is that the management manipulates the opportunistic behavior of information disclosure under the pressure of performance,which leads to the reduction of the comparability level of real food safety information and the failure to realize the optimal creation of information value.Heterogeneity analysis showed that the impact of food safety status on voluntary food safety information disclosure was more significant in agricultural and sideline food processing industry and food manufacturing industry,western regions and ordinary cities.Third,the establishment of the tripartite evolutionary game relationship between agricultural product processing enterprises,consumers and the government can achieve the balance of interests of all subjects under the goal of food safety information governance and governance capacity modernization.On the other hand,only by establishing a stable and balanced relationship between all parties,deepening consumers’ understanding of voluntary food safety information disclosure,using consumer subsidies to reduce consumers’ food safety information search costs,and promoting food safety supervision from government-led to multi-stakeholder collaborative governance and positive interaction,can food safety accidents be effectively contained.In other words,only by establishing a stable and balanced relationship between subjects,deepening consumers’ understanding of voluntary food safety information disclosure,and using consumer subsidies,can consumers reduce the cost of searching for food safety information.Fourth,although voluntary food safety information disclosure will bring about an increase in corporate subsidies,it is worth noting that the effect of food safety performance to help enterprises obtain government subsidies only exists in the short term.In the long run,although the government can identify the catering behavior of agricultural product processing enterprises,it is not sustainable.Specifically,voluntary food safety information disclosure has a significant promoting effect on government subsidies,and this conclusion is still valid after the relevant robustness test.The analysis of the mechanism of action shows that market attention will significantly increase the regulatory pressure on food safety information of local governments,and local governments will pay more attention to the real utility of food safety,thus restraining the positive relationship between “duplicity” voluntary food safety information disclosure and government subsidies.By subdividing the subsidy dimensions of subsidy types,it is found that there are obvious dimensional differences in revenue-related enterprise subsidies among different agricultural product processing enterprises,while government subsidies related to assets are not obvious.This may be the capital mismatch caused by government intervention.In the context of regional and scale,the voluntary food safety information performance of western provinces,ordinary cities and small-scale enterprises can more significantly improve the information resource acquisition effect.Fifth,through the comparative analysis of vertical double cases,it is found that voluntary food safety information disclosure can effectively alleviate and avoid the violation risk of agricultural product processing enterprises and reduce the punishment of enterprises.The key reason is that voluntary food safety information disclosure has “inhibiting effect”.As a representation of corporate ethical standards,information disclosure not only affects the formulation and implementation of management decisions,but also affects the judgment of external entities on the operating efficiency and image of enterprises.The “window effect” of voluntary food safety information disclosure can repair and rebuild brand reputation,restore the common violation situation where the “trust” crisis is not strong,and reduce the high cost of wrong behavior of agricultural product processing enterprises.Further research shows that voluntary food safety information disclosure weakens the penalty effect by enhancing corporate reputation.Driven by different internal and external factors,there are obvious differences in this effect in agricultural product processing enterprises.Management characteristics,enterprise strategy,national policy adjustment and social attention play a significant moderating role in this effect.Based on the above research findings,the following policy recommendations are proposed.First,agricultural product processing enterprises should fully explore the advantages of food information to enhance the ability of sustainable development.Second,the government should build a unified information platform and improve the information disclosure regulatory mechanism.A unified voluntary food safety information disclosure platform should be constructed to realize the dual goals of disclosure efficiency and financial reporting quality improvement.Third,attach importance to the synergistic optimization of multiple interest bodies to enhance the effectiveness of food safety information governance.Construct and optimize the government-centered cooperative governance network and corresponding institutional framework,and introduce a synergistic food safety supervision model of multiple subjects with equal rights and responsibilities.Fourth,stakeholders should pay attention to the quality and strategy of information disclosure and rationally recognize the value of information disclosure.Non-professional investors should be prevented from blindly following the crowd and pursuing short-term interests.Fifth,strengthen the external supervision of information disclosure and improve the quality of food safety information disclosure.By playing the function of external supervision,gathering social influence,and alleviating public opinion pressure,it can then inhibit the violations of agricultural product processing enterprises,optimize the signal transmission mechanism,and ultimately empower the sustainable and high-quality development of agricultural product processing enterprises. |
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