替代还是互补？社交媒体使用与会计信息的有用性

Abstract

Accounting information is an important source of information in the capital market. But with the development of big data and information technology, how will the usefulness of accounting information be affected? This paper takes social media, a product of the big data era, as the research object and tries to explore this problem. It is found that social media contains information related to corporate earnings. When such information is integrated into stock price, it forms a substitute with accounting information and weakens the influence of accounting information in the capital market. But at the same time, the communication between investors in social media can reduce the processing cost of accounting information, help accounting information better integrate into stock prices, and improve the influence of accounting information in the capital market. Although social media has two effects on the usefulness of accounting information, it is found through the test of exogenous scenarios of social media launch that social media improves the usefulness of accounting information on the whole. The cross-sectional analysis finds that the impact of social media on corporate accounting information is also different for firms with different number of retail investors and complexity of financial information. Mechanistic tests suggest that information related to a firm's unanticipated earnings is already present in social media before the earnings announcement; after the earnings announcement, social media can improve retail investors’ comprehension of professional accounting information. This paper helps people to correctly understand the role of accounting information in the era of big data, and also provides a theoretical basis for accounting reform.