Factors affecting the level of voluntary public disclosure: A research on Borsa Istanbul companies

Public disclosure is defined as the disclosure to the public of events, developments and special circumstances that may affect the investors' decisions, in order to ensure that the capital market operates in a clear and transparent manner and to ensure that all parties are informed. Making a public disclosure by businesses is the act of informing customers, investors and all stakeholders in general about the relevant information. Full disclosure of relevant information by businesses especially enables investors to make informed decisions and helps reduce the feeling of mistrust and speculation. Disclosure reveals negative or positive news and financial information about the company. Disclosures are examined from two perspectives, mandatory and voluntary disclosure. Changes, competition and the increase in the speed of financial mobility in the world have caused information users to need different information other than the mandatory information that businesses have declared. In this context, businesses also make voluntary statements of their own will, in addition to mandatory statements. In this context, besides mandatory disclosures, businesses also make voluntary disclosures of their own free will. However, some business characteristics affect the level of voluntary disclosures. In this study, in order to evaluate what these effects are; the factors affecting the level of voluntary public disclosure were investigated and the relationships between the variables were examined. The data set of the study consists of annual reports, financial statements and material disclosures of 156 companies from 4 different sectors, which are continuously traded in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (BIST) index between 2012 and 2019. Independent variables in the research model; firm size, firm age, leverage, return on sales, return on assets, return on equity, liquidity, audit quality, listing status, ownership concentration, foreign ownership, board size, board independence, CEO duality and financial and accounting knowledge of board members; The dependent variables are strategic information, financial information, non-financial information, board information and total voluntary disclosure information. Panel data techniques were used to analyse data. According to the results of the study, the first important finding was that leverage, sales profitability and the finance and accounting knowledge level of the members of the board of directors had a positive effect on the strategic information variable, while the foreign ownership and CEO duality variables had a negative effect. It has been determined that there is a positive relationship between liquidity, time spent in the stock market, the size of the board of directors, the independence of the board of directors and the level of finance and accounting knowledge of the board members. As the third finding of the study, it was concluded that the variables of leverage, sales profitability, liquidity, time spent in the stock market, the size of the board of directors, the independence of the board of directors and the finance and accounting knowledge level of the members of the board of directors have a positive effect on the financial information variable, while the CEO duality variable has a negative effect. In the fourth finding of the study, it was determined that the variables of leverage, sales profitability, board size, board independence, and the finance and accounting knowledge level of the members of the board of directors had a positive effect on the knowledge of the board, while the variables of time spent in the stock market and CEO duality had a negative effect. In the last finding of the study, the variables of firm size, leverage, sales profitability, audit quality, time spent in the stock market, board size, board independence and finance and accounting knowledge level of board members on the total voluntary disclosure level variable are positive while CEO duality has a negative effect.