Dividend Payout of Publicly Listed Family Firms as a Two-Stage Mixed Gamble: Evidence from Korea
研究韩国上市家族企业股利支付行为，发现家族企业更可能发放股利但金额较低，且业绩反馈影响支付水平，对关注家族企业治理的学者有参考价值。
Family firms dominate publicly listed companies across many Asian economies, yet their dividend payout behavior remains theoretically ambiguous. While dividends can enhance governance legitimacy, they also constrain internal resources that are critical for sustaining socioemotional wealth (SEW) across generations. This study conceptualizes dividend policy in publicly listed family firms as a two-stage mixed gamble involving trade-offs between preserving current SEW through governance legitimacy and securing future SEW through resource accumulation. Using panel data on South Korean listed firms from 2010 to 2019 and employing Heckman’s two-stage selection model, we find that family firms are more likely than non-family firms to initiate dividends, signaling conformity to market governance norms, but subsequently distribute lower payout levels to retain resources for long-term continuity. We further examine how performance feedback moderates these trade-offs. Positive performance feedback prompts family firms to increase dividend payouts, whereas negative feedback makes them more reluctant to reduce dividends. Additional analyses show that these effects are stronger among family firms with higher institutional ownership. Overall, this study extends the mixed-gamble framework to sequential financial decisions and clarifies how controlling families manage intra-SEW conflicts between legitimacy pressures tied to current SEW and transgenerational objectives for future SEW through dividend policy.