To read or to listen? Does disclosure delivery mode impact investors' reactions to managers' tone language?

W. Brooke Elliott, Serena Loftus, Amanda Winn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We examine how disclosure delivery mode—oral versus written—influences investors' reactions to managers' tone language. We hypothesize that listening to disclosures, relative to reading them, causes managers' qualitative word choices to have a greater impact on investors' judgments. We theorize that this effect occurs because oral delivery mode promotes heuristic processing and qualitative tone language is an easy-to-process disclosure element. The results from an experiment in a conference call setting are consistent with our hypothesis and suggest a boundary condition. Specifically, the interaction of mode and tone language is significant in a setting where heuristic processing is likely (good earnings news) but not in a setting where investors are likely to scrutinize the disclosure (bad earnings news). Our results inform investors about the potential consequences of how they consume disclosures. Specifically, we show that investors are more susceptible to managers' tone language when listening to disclosures containing good news than when reading them.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)7-38
Number of pages32
JournalContemporary Accounting Research
Volume41
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2024
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • conference calls
  • delivery mode
  • disclosures
  • investment decisions
  • tone language

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Accounting
  • Finance
  • Economics and Econometrics

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