Leverage and Profitability on Company Dividend Policy in Moderation of Audit Committee and Gender Diversity

Summary

This research paper, authored by Hidayat and Kusumayadi in 2026, investigates the intricate relationships between leverage, profitability, and dividend policy, specifically examining the moderating roles of audit committees and gender diversity. The study focused on non-financial companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) over a five-year period from 2018 to 2022. To achieve its objectives, the authors employed a quantitative research approach, utilizing panel data regression analysis and Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) with EViews 12 software. The population for the study comprised all non-financial companies listed on the IDX during the specified period, totaling 518 companies. From this population, a sample of 110 companies was selected using a purposive sampling method, resulting in a robust dataset of 550 observations for analysis. The findings reveal several significant insights into corporate financial decisions. Firstly, the study determined that leverage exerts a positive and significant effect on dividend policy, indicating that companies with higher debt levels tend to distribute more dividends. Secondly, profitability also showed a positive and significant influence on dividend policy, suggesting that more profitable companies are inclined to pay higher dividends to their shareholders. Regarding the moderating variables, the research yielded mixed results. It was found that the audit committee could not moderate the effect of leverage on dividend policy. However, the audit committee *was* able to moderate the effect of profitability on dividend policy, implying that the presence and function of an audit committee can alter how a company's profitability translates into dividend distributions. Conversely, gender diversity was found to be ineffective in moderating the impact of either leverage or profitability on dividend policy. The implications of these findings are multifaceted. For company management, understanding the direct positive effects of leverage and profitability on dividend policy is crucial for financial planning and shareholder relations. The moderating role of audit committees in the profitability-dividend policy nexus suggests that strong corporate governance, particularly through an active audit committee, can influence how financial performance translates into shareholder returns. This could encourage companies to strengthen their audit committee structures and oversight. The non-moderating role of gender diversity, on the other hand, indicates that simply having gender-diverse boards or committees may not, by itself, alter the relationships between financial health indicators and dividend payouts within the studied context. This could prompt further research into *how* gender diversity might influence such policies, perhaps through different mechanisms or in different corporate environments. Investors might also find these results useful in understanding the factors driving dividend decisions in Indonesian non-financial firms, potentially influencing their investment strategies.