A revisited meta-analysis of the relationship between corporate characteristics and various types of voluntary disclosure

• In Event: Financial Accounting and Reporting III

Abstract

This study tests the relationship between voluntary disclosure of social, environmental and intellectual capital information and corporate characteristics using a meta-analysis of 71 published studies over a period of twenty years.
Findings provide evidence that corporate size and audit firm size have a significant effect on all types of voluntary information disclosed by firm. In addition, our results show that audit firm size is significantly related to voluntary disclosure especially in civil law European countries. Our results also show that the relationship between multinationality, leverage ratio, profitability and voluntary disclosure is moderated by legal and institutional characteristics, disclosure scores and explanatory variable measures.
Meta-analytic findings of this study lend support to the established theories of voluntary disclosure (e.g. agency theory, signalling theory, legitimacy, political cost, proprietary costs and stakeholder theories).

Authors

• Mohsen Souissi, Fayetteville State University

• Kamran Ahmed, La Trobe University

• Hichem Khlif, University of Economics and Management of Mahdia, University of Monastir, Tunisia