Kuwait Corporate Characteristics and Level of Risk Disclosure: A Content Analysis Approach

This study investigated the association between specific corporate characteristics - mainly company size, leverage, liquidity, profitability, complexity, auditor type, and industry type - and corporate risk disclosure (CRD) in the annual reports for a sample of 109 Kuwaiti listed non-financial companies. A manual content analysis approach was used to measure risk disclosure by counting the number of risk-related sentences in annual reports. A multivariate regression analysis was employed to test the association between risk disclosure and the corporate-specific characteristics. The results indicated that the total sentences of risk disclosure were 1,461 sentences with a mean 19.87. The quantity of risk disclosures for all categories of risks was very limited. The findings showed that the CRD is associated positively with size, liquidity, complexity and auditor type. In addition, the results indicated significant differences among industries. However, the findings also showed that the association between CRD and other corporate-specific characteristics (leverage and profitability) is insignificant. This study concluded that the findings are also consistent with both agency and signaling theories.