Research On The Impact Of Food Safety Information Disclosure On Corporate Growth And Its Path

Food is the priority of the people,and safety is the priority of food.Food safety is important to protect public health and enhance the confidence of society.In 2022,the Central Document No.1,it is clearly pointed out that "strengthen the supervision of agricultural quality and safety",placing food safety in a very important position.In recent years,"leather milk","poison capsules","lean meat essence","plasticizer" and other incidents,resulting in food safety problems have intensified,seriously affecting the confidence of the whole community in food safety.Some companies are less aware of the damage caused to society by their own food safety problems and usually begin to take remedial measures only after food safety problems have arisen,but the resulting crisis of trust is irreparable.The crisis of trust comes from two sources: first,the quality of the food itself;second,the amplification effect generated by information asymmetry.At present,Chinese food companies are not very enthusiastic about disclosing food safety information.When companies pursue economic interests,it is easy to downplay the disclosure of information related to food safety.The fundamental reason may be that enterprises cannot determine whether voluntary disclosure of food safety information is beneficial to their corporate development.Then,How will food safety disclosure affect corporate growth? And what are the pathways through which this impact is shaped?Solving these problems can deeply understand the motivation of enterprise food safety information disclosure and promote enterprises to disclose relevant information actively from passive.Based on the existing domestic and international research results,this paper based on information asymmetry theory,stakeholder theory,principal-agent theory and legitimacy theory.This paper selects food listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from2013-2021 as the research object.Food safety related data is compiled manually for the disclosure of food safety information by Chinese enterprises.The content analysis method was used to construct a food safety information disclosure index to quantify the degree of disclosure of corporate food safety information.This paper empirically explores the impact of food safety disclosure on corporate growth and the pathways of its influence,and further explores the heterogeneity of the impact mechanisms between the two in different situations.The findings are as follows:(1)The conclusion that food safety information disclosure is conducive to promoting enterprise growth.After controlling endogenous problems caused by reverse causality and replacing enterprise growth indicators for robustness test,the conclusion remains unchanged.(2)A heterogeneous study of the impact of food safety disclosure on corporate growth found that the contribution of food safety disclosure to corporate growth was stronger in non-state enterprises,in enterprises that received more social attention,and in enterprises that were in a lower legal environment and at a lower level of marketization.(3)Through the intermediary effect model,it is found that investor confidence plays an intermediary effect in the process of food safety information disclosure promoting corporate growth.In addition,the robustness test is conducted to replace the key indicators,and the conclusion remains unchanged.(4)On the basis of the impact path study,an extended study based on the firm’s financing constraints and the degree of competition found that corporates subject to higher levels of financing constraints and competition have a more pronounced mediating role for investor confidence in the process of food safety disclosure for corporate growth.