The Effect of Investor Protection on Stock Crash Risk: A Test of Effectiveness of Operant Conditioning Behavior Theory

Maintaining and protecting the interests of shareholders is considered as one of the main pillars of each capital market, which, while increasing the level of financial transparency, reduces stock crash risk. Under these circumstances, companies are always trying to strengthen shareholders 'trust and confidence by enhancing the level of protection of shareholders' rights through effective ways such as raising the level of incentives for managers, while reducing the cost of representation. The purpose of this research is Investigating the Effectiveness of Operant Conditioning Behavior Theory on the Effect of Investor protection on stock crash risk in Companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange. In this study, 96 companies were surveyed during the period 2014 to 2018. In this research, in order to measure Investor protection of rights, the criteria used such as the quality of accounting information, the effectiveness of internal controls, the voting rights of shareholders, the index of ownership concentration and corporate governance index based on the multi-criteria decision making model by topsis and weight method entropy. Also, for measuring the stock crash risk, two criteria for negative stock skewness (NCSKEW) and (DUVOL) were used. To assess the behavior of the behavior of the actor (stimulus-response), we used the competitive motivation of managers using the managers' compensation gap. The results of the research showed that Investor protection of rights has a negative and significant effect on the stock crash risk. It was also found that competitive incentives negatively impacted the Investor protection of rights on stock crash risk.