Financial Performance, a Driver for Information Voluntary Disclosure: Insight from Manufacturing Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

The prevailing issues surrounding voluntary disclosure is corporate failure, fraud perpetration, information asymmetry and inability to attract much investment. Companies with high financial performance tend to disclosure more information in their annual report by way of showcasing their superiority over less performing companies. In the light of the above, the study sought to ascertain the effect of financial performance on voluntary disclosure of quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria as at 1st January, 2019. Expo facto research design was adopted and secondary data were extracted from the annual report of nineteen (19) manufacturing companies for a period of ten years (2008-2019). The analysis of the study was done using STATA software to run the descriptive and inferential statistics (multivariate regression analysis). The result depicted an insignificant effect between financial performance and market competition information voluntary disclosure (MCIVD), and also a significant effect between financial performance and human capital information voluntary disclosure (HCIVD). Return on asset showed a negative but significant effect, liquidity a negative but insignificant effect, and market capitalization a positive but insignificant effect on MCIVD. Whereas Return on asset showed a negative but significant effect, liquidity and market capitalization a positive but insignificant effect on HCIVD. The study recommends that management should boost their market capitalization to have more market competition information voluntary disclosure. Also, management should strive towards improving the LQ and MCAP of manufacturing companies in Nigeria. This in turn will help to meet up the need of employees in having more voluntary human capital information disclosure.