Abstract Based on the listed companies that issued social responsibility reports from 2007 to 2019, using deep learning techniques to extract aesthetic indicators from social responsibility reports, the present study investigates the empirical relationship between aesthetics of social responsibility reports and debt financing costs of the listed companies. The results demonstrate: the higher the aesthetics of social responsibility report, the lower the cost of debt financing for the listed companies, which indicates that a beautiful social responsibility report can better reduce the information asymmetry between debt creditors and the companies, and enhance the creditors’ confidence in the debt repayment ability of the companies. The proportion of shares held by institutional investors of listed companies and the analyst attention of listed companies will enhance the negative relationship between the aesthetics of social responsibility reports and the debt financing costs, indicating that institutional investors and analysts will better interpret and spread beautiful social responsibility reports and expand their impact.
MA Baojun,SONG Yixing,CHEN Yi等. The Impact of Social Responsibility Reports’ Aesthetics on Corporate Debt Cost[J]. Chinese Journal of Management, 2022, 19(12): 1855-.
