The Short-term Impact of Content Regulation Policies on Stock Prices of Chinese Short-video Listed Companies —— An Empirical Analysis Based on Event Study Methodology

Abstract

With the rapid development of China's short-video industry, content regulation policies have become increasingly stringent. Taking 10 major national short-video regulatory policies issued from 2021 to 2025 as the research objects and selecting two representative listed short-video companies, Kuaishou (01024.HK) and Bilibili (09626.HK), as research samples, this paper adopts the event study method to investigate the short-term impact of the introduction of regulatory policies on the stock prices of short-video listed companies. The research findings are as follows: (1) The introduction of content regulation policies has a significant negative impact on the stock prices of short-video listed companies, with the average cumulative abnormal return (CAR) in the [-1,+1] window being -1.52%, which is significant at the 5% statistical level; (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that Kuaishou is more sensitive to regulatory policies than Bilibili, with average CARs of -1.81% and -1.24% respectively; (3) The impacts of different types of regulatory policies vary, among which special rectifications targeting malicious marketing and content orientation exert the greatest negative impact on stock prices. The research conclusions of this paper enrich the literature on platform economic regulation and capital market responses, and provide empirical evidence for investors and regulatory authorities.