Variable Category

Variable Name

Symbol

Measurement Method

Data Source

Dependent Variable

Asset Mispricing

|Deviation|

Absolute value of 1 minus the ratio of intrinsic value to market value (V/P), as shown in Formula (1) (Xu & Xu, 2015)

CSMAR

Independent Variable

Readability of digital transformation information disclosure

Readability

According to the readability measurement method proposed by Meng et al. (2017) , calculate the proportion of vocabulary in the text that complies with the General and Standard Chinese Characters Table (State Language Commission, 2013) , as shown in Formula (2)

Annual reports of listed companies

Moderating Variables

Media Attention

Media_Att

Natural logarithm of the total number of news headlines mentioning the company throughout the year (plus 1) (Yu et al., 2023b)

CEDS

High-Tech Industry Affiliation, i.e. Technology Intensity

High_Tech

Value is 1 if the enterprise belongs to the high-tech industry according to “the Classification of High-Tech Industries (Manufacturing Industry) (National Bureau of Statistics, 2013a) ” and “the Classification of High-Tech Industries (Service Industry) (National Bureau of Statistics, 2013b) ” in China; otherwise, the value is 0 (Bai, 2022)

See 4.2 for details

Control Variables

Company Size

Ln_Size

Natural logarithm of total annual assets

CSMAR

Years Listed

FAge

Ln (current year − listing year + 1)

CSMAR

Return on Total Assets

ROA

Net profit/Average total assets

CSMAR

Tobin’s Q

TobinQ

(Market value of tradable shares + Non-tradable shares × Net asset value per share + Book value of liabilities)/Total assets

CSMAR

Duality of Roles

Dual

1 if the chairman and general manager are the same person; otherwise, 0

CSMAR

Largest Shareholder’s Stake

Top1

Number of shares held by the largest shareholder/Total number of shares

CSMAR

State-Owned Enterprise

SOE

1 for state-owned holding enterprises, 0 for others

CSMAR

Annual Report Readability

All_

Readability

Refer to the “Readability” calculation method to calculate the readability of the “Management Discussion and Analysis” section in the annual report.

Annual reports of listed companies