Abstract:

Corporate innovation investment decisions are the result of a combination of multidimensional factors. In the information economy, the media plays an important role in disseminating information. News media reports can generate information with economic value, alleviate information friction in the capital market, and influence the strategic decision-making behavior of companies. Research on the effects of the media governance is well documented, but research about the impact of the news media coverage of emotional tendencies on corporate behaviors has not been fully explored. Based on this, this paper theoretically analyzes and empirically tests the impact of the news media sentiment on the innovation investment in listed companies and the specific paths and boundary conditions of the effect, using listed companies from 2014 to 2018 as the research sample.
Based on the signal theory, the social information processing theory, and the existing related studies, this paper argues that positive news media sentiment can have a spillover effect on managers' optimistic beliefs, making them feel more optimistic about the future returns of innovation investments and find project failures more acceptable, thus enhancing listed companies' investment in the corporate innovation. Positive news media sentiment attracts people with high academic qualifications to the company's management through signaling, optimizes the allocation of the human capital to the management, improves the quality of the management team, attracts scientific researchers to the company, optimizes the staff structure, and enhances the overall exploratory and creative abilities of the staff team. The positive sentiment of the news media to report on listed companies represents to some extent the recognition of listed companies by the capital market, which can help listed companies to obtain corporate financing more easily. In addition, positive news media sentiment attracts all types of investors to actively hold company shares, and the increase in the stock liquidity allows active strategic investors to intervene in the corporate strategic decision-making process, effectively curbing management's short-sightedness, improving the quality of strategic decisions, and urging management to actively pursue corporate innovation activities.
After overcoming the endogeneity problem and conducting robustness tests, this paper finds that the more positive the news media sentiment, the higher the level of the corporate innovation investment. Specifically, the news media sentiment promotes the corporate innovation investment through the three channels of managerial overconfidence, senior talent mobility, and stock liquidity. With a low percentage of women in the management, a high demand for management consulting, and non-financial financing targets, the news media sentiment plays a greater role in promoting the corporate innovation investment. The attribute of the state-owned property will weaken the promotion effect of the news media sentiment on the corporate innovation investment, and the attribute of the high-tech industry will strengthen the promotion effect of the news media sentiment on the corporate innovation investment. Compared with the existing studies, this paper provides new empirical evidence to explore the driving forces of the corporate innovation investment, enriches the applicability of the signal theory and the social information processing theory in the Chinese context, and expands the research perspective in the field of the media governance, which is a useful addition to the research field of “the media attention and the corporate innovation”.

Key words: News Media Sentiment, Corporate Innovation Investment, Manager Overconfidence, Senior Talent Flow, Stock Liquidity

摘要：

本文以2014—2018年沪深A股上市公司为研究样本,实证检验新闻媒体情绪对企业创新投资的影响及作用机制。结果显示,新闻媒体情绪越积极,企业创新投资水平越高,在克服内生性问题及稳健性检验后,该结论仍成立。机制检验表明,新闻媒体情绪通过诱发管理者过度自信、吸引高级人才、提高股票流动性三个渠道促进企业创新投资。进一步分析显示,在管理层女性占比低、管理层咨询需求高、非融资融券标的情况下,新闻媒体情绪对企业创新投资的影响更大。异质性检验显示,国有产权属性弱化了新闻媒体情绪对企业创新投资的促进作用,高新技术行业属性强化了新闻媒体情绪对企业创新投资的促进作用。

关键词: 新闻媒体情绪, 企业创新投资, 管理者过度自信, 高级人才流动, 股票流动性