Abstract: How social trust which is an important informal institution affects micro-systems in corporations is worth studying. Taking manufacturing industry corporations listed in A share market during 2000 to 2014 as research sample, the paper finds that social trust has guilt mechanism effect, so the debt contractual usefulness of accounting earnings is more significant in areas where social trust are low. Furthermore, compared with state-owned corporations, social trust has more significant effect on the contractual usefulness of accounting earnings in non-state-owned corporations. The results are robust to sample selection bias after using Heckman model. The results have important significance not only to recognizing the role of social trust, but also to promoting governance role of accounting information.

Key words: social trust, accounting earnings, debt contract, property right