Research On The Effect Of Voluntary Disclosure On The Cost Of Equity Capital From The Perspective Of Enterprise Life Cycle

The development of Chinese socialism has entered a new era.With the continuous deepening of comprehensive reforms,the investment environment of China's capital market has been continuously optimized,and the regulatory system and institution have become increasingly sound.As the basis for ensuring the benign operation of the capital market and investment decisions of investors,information disclosure has long been a heated topic of concern and research in the theoretical and practical areas.According to the existing documents,when probing into the relationship between voluntary disclosure and the cost of equity capital,most foreign scholars and domestic researchers still stay in the static level but fail to explore the changing rules of the relationship with the continuous evolution of corporate life cycle from the dynamic perspective of corporate development.In other words,is there a substantial difference between voluntary disclosure and the cost of equity capital for the heterogeneity of the characteristics of different corporates in the life cycle stage? The development of corporates resembles the development of organisms,generally from growth,maturity to decline.In different life cycle stages,corporates have different internal and external environment,production and operation methods,organizational structure and many other aspects of changes.Therefore,whether a corporate can disclose such information for investors to know and use and make rational investment decisions and correct evaluation of corporate value is the prerequisite for reducing the cost of equity capital and promoting the benign operation of capital market resource allocation.In order to excavate deep into the relationship between voluntary disclosure and cost of equity capital,and the dynamic impacts of voluntary disclosure on cost of equity capital under different life cycle stages,this article selects 2015-2018 A-share listed companies as a research sample,uses content analysis to divide three dimensions of voluntary disclosure into non-financial information,financial information and strategic information,and construct voluntary disclosure index and use the residual income value model(GLS model)to estimate the cost of equity capital.Firstly,verify the voluntary disclosure level of the overall sample by means of multivariate regression models,that is,the effect of comprehensive voluntary disclosure on the cost of equity capital.Secondly,examine the intrinsic relationship between various dimensions voluntary disclosure and cost of equity capital.Finally,utilize multivariate group regression method to test the changing rules of variousdimensions voluntary disclosure and the cost of equity capital along with the evolution of corporate life cycle.Empirical research results indicate:(1)The voluntary disclosure level has a negative correlation with the cost of equity capital.(2)Within the voluntary disclosure,non-financial voluntary disclosure has a significant negative correlation with the cost of equity capital and has the largest estimated coefficient with the highest impact degree;financial voluntary disclosure and strategic voluntary disclosure present a positive pull-up effect on the cost of equity capital and the latter is statistically significant.(3)With the continuous evolution of the corporate life cycle,the cost of equity capital decreases first and then increases,with the highest in the growth period,followed by the recession period,and the smallest in the maturity period.The voluntary disclosure index of non-financial information and financial information is basically consistent with the changing rules of the cost of equity capital and the strategic voluntary disclosure index gradually decreases with the life cycle stages.(4)With the gradual development of the corporate life cycle from the growth period to the mature period and finally into the recession period,the impact of non-financial voluntary disclosure on the cost of equity capital is significantly negatively correlated during the growth period and the mature period,but viewing from the entire life cycle stage,the degree of impact is gradually weakening;the equity capital cost effect of financial voluntary disclosure and strategic voluntary disclosure shows a trend of first strengthening and then weakening with the evolution of the life cycle,and the strategic voluntary disclosure has statistically significant in the growth and maturity period.In general,the voluntary disclosure of each dimension has the most obvious impact on the cost of equity capital in the growth and maturity period,but the lowest impact in the recession period.The research results of this article not only enrich the theoretical research content and framework of voluntary disclosure and the cost of equity capital,but also guide corporate to standardize their own information disclosure systems in combination with different life cycle stages,decrease the cost of equity capital and expand the wealth effect of information disclosure and provide strategic options.