Impact of online communication on the ambidextrous innovation investment of enterprises

With the rapid progress of China's information technology and digital economy, investors, especially retail investors, can communicate directly with enterprises on online platforms of stock exchanges. In this paper, using crawler means to collect all the question-and-answer (Q&A) logs on online platforms and taking A-share listed firms in 2010∼2020 as samples, we explore the effect of online communication between investors and enterprises on corporate ambidextrous innovation investment. The results show that such online interaction can greatly encourage developmental and exploratory innovation investment and play a more significant effect in the latter; the quality of communication is positively related to ambidextrous innovation investment, but excessive attention to investor returns in the interaction process restrains ambidextrous innovation investment. We take various approaches, such as the entropy balancing test, the instrumental variable method, and the Heckman two-stage method, to confirm the validity of the results. The mechanism test shows that interaction can increase ambidextrous innovation investment mainly by alleviating corporate financing constraints and improving corporate governance. Furthermore, we find that this effect is more evident in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned firms and that the promotion effect of interaction on ambidextrous innovation investment eventually helps improve firm value.