Investor Focus And Earnings Management ——Statistical Test Based On The Energy Industry

Energy resource is essential for technological,economic,and social growth.However,the use of traditional energy is usually accompanied by high carbon emissions and high pollution problems.With the increase of environmental problems,energy transformation to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions has gradually become become a global consensus.How to achieve steady development of enterprises during the energy transition is a common challenge for the energy industry.my country is a key participant in global energy supply and demand.The “3060 target” of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality has promoted and driven the transformation and development of my country’s energy industry.During the energy transition period,in order to stabilize company profits and maintain financing needs,energy firms may engage in earnings management.Excessive earnings management will reduce the quality of corporate financial information,harm the interests of investors,affect the development of the capital market,and is harm to the sustainable development of the energy industry.Investor attention is an important part of a company’s external supervision,and investors are concerned about the earnings management behavior that may affect the company.Therefore,this article takes companies in the energy industry as the research object to study the impact of investors’ attention on the earnings management of energy companies.This article uses A-share listed companies in the energy industry in my country’s as a research sample to study the impact of investors’ attention on the earnings management of energy companies.In addition,among the differences in energy company type,board size,company size,external audit,and geographic location,investors are concerned about the differences in governance effects,and analyze the reasons for the differences.Since investors are concerned that the management of accrued earnings may be changed by changing internal control,this article examines the mediating effect of internal control.Secondly,due to the limitation of the data,in order to avoid the result bias caused by missing variables or measurement errors,the industry average of the degree of concern is used as an instrumental variable to re-estimate the model.Finally,in order to further test the robustness of the model,this paper adopts the method of replacing investors’ concerns and adding new control variables to test the robustness of the model.The research results show that: First,investors in the energy industry have a positive U-shaped influence on earnings management.Second,the heterogeneity test results show that the U-shaped relationship between new energy companies and traditional energy investors’ attention to earnings management is significant,but the impact of investor attention on earnings management of new energy companies is relatively flat;internal supervision is relatively strong,The U-shaped relationship between attention and earnings management is more pronounced among listed energy companies with larger companies,looser external audits,and located in less developed regions.Third,the intermediary effect test shows that investors’ attention can affect the company’s earnings management by improving the company’s internal control capabilities.Fourth,the results of the endogeneity test and robustness test show that under the circumstances of controlling endogeneity,changing the calculation method of explained variables,and increasing explanatory variables,the U-shaped influence of investors’ attention on earnings management is still significant,and the model is robust.The contributions and innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects: First,this study reveals the nonlinear effect of investors’ attention on earnings management in the energy industry,and expands the research on the influencing factors of earnings management in energy companies.Second,this study verifies that internal control can be used as a channel for investors’ attention to influence earnings management,and improves the mechanism for investors’ attention to influence earnings management.Finally,this paper combines the research conclusions with the current situation of the energy market,and puts forward a series of practical suggestions from the perspectives of society,enterprises and investors,which is of practical significance to reduce the energy market turbulence caused by earnings management in the process of energy transformation and promote the sustainable development of energy enterprises.