ABSTRACT
This study investigates the effect of corporate online interaction activeness on investors’ perceptions of earnings information. Using a large sample of Chinese listed firms for the period 2010–2019, we find that investors’ perceptions of earnings information, measured by earnings response coefficients (ERCs), increase with the level of corporate online interaction activeness, and the effect is more pronounced in firms with a larger retail investor base and higher stock illiquidity. Our results suggest that social media interaction helps to improve stock price efficiency.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Youth Fund Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education in China (18YJC790204) and the research fund from Sichuan University (SKSYL201822, 2018hhf-47, SCU-BS-PY-202003, 2013SCU04A32)
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The primary textual data of interaction transcripts we collected include investors’ account name, question time, question content, firms’ reply time and reply content.
2 We thank an anonymous referee for suggesting these tests. These results are available upon request by email.