Seeing is believing? Visual, emotional, and ethical dimensions of corporate financial impression management

Hellman, Andreas;Melis, Andrea

2025-01-01

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Abstract

This editorial introduces and synthesizes contributions to the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance special issue on “Corporate Financial Impression Management” (CFIM). The issue examines the theme of impression management in corporate settings and explicitly encompasses financial behavior, investor perception, and experimental analysis. This special issue highlights the dramatic shift from static identity signalling to dynamic, affective, and algorithmic presentation strategies. Through experiments, machine learning, and behavioral tracking, the papers in this issue show how visual cues, emotional stimuli, and ethical silences influence financial decision-making. We propose the new framing of CFIM to describe this evolving field and identify future challenges at the intersection of AI, regulation, and financial communication ethics.