Abstract
Given the importance of transparency in today's financial environment, it is surprising that limited research has examined investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures and how their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures influence subsequent responses such as perceived trust and attitude toward brokerage firms. Research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices and the Social Contract Theory suggests that investors may put a relatively high value on brokerage firms that practice financial disclosures responsibly. This research probed the relevance of this assumption by testing the relations among investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures, attitudes toward CSR practices, perceived trust toward brokerage firms, attitudes toward brokerage firms and behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms with a survey study. The study used brokerage firms’ financial disclosures in general as the focus of this study's survey questions and a convenience sample consisting of investors. The results suggested that investors’ positive attitudes toward brokerage firms’ financial disclosures positively enhanced their attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices and perceived trust toward brokerage firms, whereas investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms’ CSR practices mediated their attitudes toward financial disclosures to enhancing their perceived trust toward brokerage firms. Moreover, investors’ attitudes toward brokerage firms mediated their perceived trust toward brokerage firms on enhancing their behavioral intentions toward brokerage firms.
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1(PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an Associate Professor of Communication Sciences at the University of Connecticut-Stamford. His research focuses on integrated marketing communications, information processing psychology, corporate social responsibility and promotion management. He has industry experience in advertising, public relations and electronic publishing in Taipei, Taiwan and in Boston. His works have been published in the Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Marketing Communications, International Journal of Mobile Marketing and elsewhere. He is also the principal investigator of a grant awarded from FINRA Investor Education Foundation and the recipient of a research papers award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
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Wang, A. Implications for brokerage firms’ financial disclosures: From CSR perspectives. J Financ Serv Mark 15, 112–125 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/fsm.2010.9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fsm.2010.9