Corporate voluntary disclosure practices and its association with corporate attributes: an empirical investigation of listed and non-listed commercial banks in Bangladesh

Abstract

The study evaluates the level of the voluntary disclosure practices of 27 listed and non-listed banks in Bangladesh; whether there is any significant association between bank's specific attributes (i.e., size, profitability, age, and ownership structure) and the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports over the period of the study. To measure the level of voluntary information disclosure in the annual reports of each individual bank for each year, the study considered a two-step process: 1) construction of the voluntary disclosure index; 2) scoring the voluntary information disclosure items. For analysing the study, some statistical methods (descriptive statistics, OLS regression model, correlation analysis) have been considered. The result reveals that, a diverse set of factors influence the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports of the banks. The study has the implication for current professional practice and is in important addition to existing literature in the arena of voluntary disclosure and the strategy of disclosure. The study also finds that, the bank's size and profitability have the positive relationship with the level of voluntary disclosure. On the other hand, bank's age and ownership structure have the negative relationship with the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports.