The Association between Board of Directors' Characteristics and the Level of Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Listed Banks in Borsa Istanbul

The main aim of this study is to investigate the association between some board of directors' characteristics (board independence, board size, board meetings and role duality) and the level of voluntary disclosure in annual reports of listed banks in Borsa Istanbul The deductive approach was adopted by developing hypotheses based on the relevant theories and findings of previous studies. Also, the panel data strategy was applied to analyze the collected data from annual reports across five years (2013-2017). The univariate statistical analysis and the multivariate Feasible Generalized Least Squares regression model are used in this study. The results showed that board independence, board size and board meetings were positively and significantly associated with the level of voluntary disclosure, whilst role duality was negatively but not significantly associated with the level of voluntary disclosure. The results also indicated that all bank characteristics were positively and significantly associated with the level of voluntary disclosure. Most prior studies on voluntary disclosure practices have been undertaken in developed countries and a few of them have focused on voluntary disclosure practices in the banking sector for a number of years (longitudinally). There is a requirement for more empirical studies in this area to confirm or disprove the previous results. This study will add value to the knowledge in the disclosure literature by clarifying the relationship between the board of directors' characteristics and voluntary disclosure in the banking sector of developing countries.