From posts to pricing: circular intellectual capital disclosure via social media and the cost of debt

Purpose – This study provides fresh insights into how circular intellectual capital (CIC) disclosure via social media affects firms’ cost of debt. Design/methodology/approach – The research focuses on 252 listed companies included in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Europe Index with an active X account in 2024. A large language model (LLM)-assisted content analysis was performed on a total of 42,135 posts to identify and classify information related to the nexus between intellectual capital (IC) and circular economy practices, according to predefined semantic and prompt-engineering rules. Two regression models were estimated to test the impact of CIC disclosure–proxied by two independent variables–on firms’ cost of debt, measured by the debt component of the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) as computed by the LSEG database. Findings – Empirical evidence reveals a negative and statistically significant relationship between CIC disclosure and the cost of debt, suggesting that firms communicating more extensively via social media about the integration of IC within circular economy practices benefit from more favourable borrowing conditions. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate CIC disclosure practices via social media and to provide empirical evidence of their relevance for assessing borrowers’ creditworthiness.