| Mandatory information disclosure is an important means to alleviate the problem of information asymmetry in the food market.Whether the increasing voluntary food safety information disclosure can become an important supplementary means has aroused the concern of the academic and industry.Based on the quasi-public goods nature of food safety information,consumers and investors have free-riding behavior,which requires the government to enter and force disclosure to ensure market fairness.Compulsory disclosure usually has a fixed format and scope,which can only guarantee the minimum information supply and is difficult to meet the information needs of stakeholders.A phenomenon that cannot be ignored is that more and more food enterprises voluntarily disclose food safety information.Based on the commodity attribute of food safety information disclosure,voluntary information disclosure of enterprises emphasizes cost and benefit,and the disclosure is more timely and broader.However,more "good news" will be disclosed,which may have selective bias.Moreover,the reliability of information disclosure is questioned because there is no verification procedure.Based on the public goods attribute of food quality and safety,food enterprises have a large demand for funds,but financing is difficult and costs are high.Therefore,to a certain extent,voluntary food quality and safety information is conveyed to interest stakeholders,alleviating information asymmetry,increasing investor trust and reducing debt capital cost.In view of this,this article selects food listed companies during 2008-2020 as the research sample,on the basis of theoretical analysis,from the perspective of accounting information quality,explore the food quality and safety of information disclosure and the relationship between the debt capital cost,the analysis of the actual action of food safety information disclosure and the idea of strategic groups,respectively,the impact on the cost of debt capital.This paper analyzes the impact path of food safety information disclosure on debt capital cost,and explains that food safety information disclosure affects the debt capital cost of enterprises through the two intermediaries of information transparency and corporate social responsibility.In the further analysis,the influence of food safety information disclosure on debt capital cost after government regulation is added is studied,and different property rights are divided into state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises to study the influence of property rights.The results show that :(1)the higher the level of food safety information disclosure,the lower the debt capital cost.(2)From the different groups of food quality and safety information disclosure,the actual action group has a more significant negative impact on debt capital cost.(3)Corporate information transparency and corporate social responsibility,as mediating variables,play a mediating role in the impact of food quality and safety information disclosure on debt capital cost.(4)Government policy constraints can promote food safety information disclosure.(5)When the property rights of enterprises are different,the negative impact of food quality and safety information disclosure on debt capital cost of state-owned enterprises is more significant than that of non-state-owned enterprises.The possible contributions and innovations of this paper are as follows: from the perspective of research,this paper changes from macro to micro,taking micro enterprises as the main body,focusing on voluntary food safety information disclosure,which is rarely discussed in the academic circle,and providing a new research perspective for alleviating information asymmetry in the food market.In terms of research ideas,the research follows the logical relationship of motivation,behavior and consequence,and builds an analysis framework of voluntary information disclosure behavior of food safety that emphasizes intrinsic relevance.On the basis of the existing research,the theoretical model of information disclosure is developed.Through the theoretical and empirical research,this paper reveals the impact of voluntary food safety information disclosure on corporate debt capital cost,providing a new idea for the study of voluntary information disclosure behavior. |
