Abstract: Most of the existing studies classify executive compensation stickiness under the agency topic and hold that executive compensation stickiness is caused by poor corporate governance. Taking the Chinese A-share listed companies from 2013-2016 as research object, this paper explores the formation mechanism and conduction path of executive compensation stickiness in the perspective of compensation external equity. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The external negative unfairness of compensation intensifies the executive compensation stickiness and the external positive unfairness of compensation relieves the compensation stickiness, which proves that compensation stickiness is not always an agency issue and possibly an alternative compensation mechanism of alleviating the negative unfair compensation to a certain extent. (2) The compensation structure adjustment will be caused by the compensation external negative unfairness and the increase of implicit compensation proportion has an intermediary cover-up effect when compensation external negative unfairness aggravates executive compensation stickiness. (3) The effect of compensation external negative unfairness aggravating executive compensation stickiness is more obvious when compensation regulation is strong, which proves that compensation stickiness is not a simple management loophole and the compensation control system is an important contribution to the executive compensation stickiness.

Key words: compensation stickiness, external equity of compensation, compensation regulation, implicit compensation proportion