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| Shareholders' Response to Innovation Investment: The Signal Function of Equity-based Incentive Heterogeneity |
| Zhu Fangfang |
| (College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University,Nanjing 210095, China) |
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Abstract China is currently striving for innovation-driven economic development mode against the internal resource constraints and external fierce international competition. Enterprises shoulder the responsibility of enhancing the quality and efficiency of economic development and the innovation activities ensure enterprises' competitive advantages and prolong their life cycle.#br#As agents of the shareholders, executives have the discretion to carry out innovation activities. However, by virtue of information advantage, executives tend to manipulate resourcesand harm shareholders' interests. To this end, many studies have discussed the design of equity-based incentive mechanism to encourage executives to increase innovation investment, but shareholders are ignored. Shareholders are important subjects in the corporate governance structure. Based on the signaling theory, they will make corresponding feedback by interpreting the financial data of innovation investment, and have an impact on enterprise's value. For example, if shareholders regard increased investment in innovation as a positive signal, they will give positive feedback and provide resource support to ensure the smooth progress of innovation activities and vice versa. Furthermore, when the equity is highly concentrated, the information disadvantage of shareholders can be reversed, and it is worth discussing how shareholders react to innovation investment. In addition, when analyzing the role of equity-based incentive, most existing studies assume that the TMT is homogeneous and ignore equity-based incentive heterogeneity. When the heterogeneity is high, some executives will feel deprived; while in the TMT with low heterogeneity of equity-based incentive, there will be less distribution contradiction. Different situations of equity-based incentive heterogeneity will send different signals to shareholders about the quality of TMT cooperation, and shareholders will react accordingly. However, this is rarely discussed in existing studies.#br#In view of this, taking China's A-share listed enterprises that implement equity-based incentives in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2017 to 2019 as samples, this paper uses regression analysis method and analyzes shareholders' response to innovation investment, and explores the change of this response when the shareholding is highly concentrated. Besides,it examines the mechanism by which the heterogeneous factors of equity incentives transmit signals to shareholders, and explores its influence on the relationship between innovation investment and shareholder response. Through the above research, the following conclusions are drawn. First，innovation investment is positively correlated with shareholder response. Increasing investment in innovation will send positive signal of corporate growth, and shareholders will respond positively. Second, ownership concentration positively moderates the relationship between innovation investment and shareholder response. When ownership is highly concentrated, shareholders can exert monitoring effect and support effect at the same time to urge and help executives to carry out innovative activities. Third, equity-based incentive heterogeneity negatively moderates the relationship between innovation investment and shareholder response. When the heterogeneity is high, it is easy to generate contradictions in income distribution and inhibit teamwork, which will send a signal to shareholders of poor governing capacity and weaken shareholders' positive feedback on innovation investment. Fourth, the negative moderating effect of equity-based incentive heterogeneity on the relationship between innovation investment and shareholder response is more significant in private enterprises. State-owned enterprise executives need more stability. Even if the heterogeneity of equity-based incentive is high, executives still tend to reduce conflicts. It can moderately alleviate shareholder's negative reaction to innovation investment due to the higher equity-based incentive heterogeneity. At last, operating risk is the mediating variable that equity-based incentive heterogeneity negatively influences shareholders' response to innovation investment. Higher equity-based incentive heterogeneity will interfere with innovation investment and increase business risk. When shareholders receive this signal, they will lower expectations of innovation investment.#br#To sum up, this paper examines shareholders' response to the company's innovation activities from the perspective of shareholders and studies the special situation of equity concentration, and then its influence mechanism on the relationship between innovation investment and shareholder response is analyzed. By examining the impact of equity-based incentive heterogeneity on shareholders' cognition, this paper also enriches the research on the role of internal governance factors in shareholders' response to innovation investment. At last, this paper builds a transmission mechanism between the equity-based incentive heterogeneity, operating risks and shareholders' response to innovation investment, and clarifies the path that equity-based incentive heterogeneity affects shareholders' response to innovation investment. It highlights the importance of shareholders' governance role and reveals the mechanism of shareholders' response to innovation investment based on equity-based incentive heterogeneity. This can provide suggestions for enterprises to design reasonable equity-based incentive heterogeneity, and ensure that good governance signal is sent to shareholders and supported by shareholders.#br#
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Received: 10 January 2022
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