Negative Media Coverage,investor Sentiment And Corporate Impression Management Strategy

The advent of the Internet era has had a profound impact on the development of media.The speed of media information dissemination is accelerating,the audience of news media is increasing,and the impact on the development of enterprises is expanding constantly.As the disseminator of information,media reports of news can transmit the information about the operation and management of enterprises to the public,so as to improve the transparency of enterprise information,promote the information equivalence between enterprises and stakeholders,and enable consumers and investors to have more rational choices in the capital market.Meanwhile,media reports play an important role in supervision of public opinion,promoting enterprise information disclosure,influencing the stock prices,corporate performance and also corporate governance.Because of the scarcity of attention,stimulating events are more likely to attract people's attention,so the public will pay more attention to the negative news reports of enterprises.The corporate impression management strategy can be divided into four categories: Denial,Prevarication,Explain and Apology,enterprises need to adopt the right impression management measures.By responding to negative media reports and making a voice on reported events,the negative impact on enterprises can be effectively weakened and the corporate image and reputation can be maintained.Based on the Asymmetric Information theory,the Selective Attention theory,Investor Sentiment theory,Impression Management theory and also the Reputation theory,this paper selects Chinese A-share listed companies in year 2014-2018 as sample for empirical research.By constructing several regression models,this paper discusses the influence of the amount and degree of negative media reports on corporate impression management strategy,and makes a regression analysis on whether investor sentiment plays an intermediary role in the relationship between negative media reports and corporate impression management strategy.In addition,two variables of corporate property rights and corporate social status are introduced to explore the moderating effects on the relationship of negative media reports and impression management strategies.The research conclusions of this paper are as follows :(1)the more negative media reports,the more likely enterprises tend to choose the admitted impression management strategy;(2)the more negative the media report,the more likely the enterprise tend to choose the admitted impression management strategy;(3)the amount and the degree of negative media reports have an integrated effect in the selection of corporate impression management strategies;(4)the more negative media reports,the lower the investor sentiment index;(5)the deeper the negative media coverage,the lower the investor sentiment index;(6)negative media reports influence investor sentiment and then influence the selection of impression management strategy,that is,investor sentiment plays an intermediary role in the selection of impression management strategy;(7)compared with state-owned enterprises,non-state-owned enterprises are more likely to choose the admitted impression management strategy in the face of negative media reports;(8)compared with lower social status enterprises,higher social status enterprises are more likely to choose the admitted impression management strategy in the face of negative media reports.Combined with the conclusions above,this paper puts forward several suggestions from the perspectives of media,enterprises,government and the public to help full play to the supervision role of media reports and effectively adopt to help corporates to use correct impression management strategy.On the basis of reviewing the shortcomings and limitations of this research,a feasible prospect for future research is proposed in the end of this paper.