Too Busy to Monitor Disclosure? Independent Director Busyness and the Corporate Information Environment in China

Independent directors are expected to enhance transparency, yet effective monitoring requires scarce time and attention. Building on an attention-constraint view of corporate governance, this article tests whether independent directors’ multiple outside appointments weaken disclosure quality. Using a large panel of A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2023, we find that firms whose independent directors hold multiple board seats exhibit significantly greater analyst forecast dispersion, suggesting a poorer external information environment. The relation remains robust to alternative definitions of busyness, alternative information-asymmetry proxies, lagged specifications, richer controls, and firm fixed effects. Cross-sectional analyses show that the adverse association is concentrated in competitive industries, non-state-owned enterprises, and firms located in the eastern and central regions. By linking director time constraints to market-facing information quality in an emerging-market setting, the study extends the director busyness literature beyond internal outcomes and highlights board attention as a critical input to disclosure oversight.