Abstract: Based on 1,316 M&A events that occured in the SME Board and ChiNext from 2016 to 2019, this paper focuses on the behaviors and types of performance commitments in M&As, and constructs the relevant indexes with text analysis method to investigate such commitments’ impacts on corporate financing constraints. The findings are as follows．Firstly, the performance commitment behaviors in M&As can significantly reduce corporate financing constraints. Secondly, voluntary performance commitments in M&As can better relieve corporate financing constraints than mandatory ones. If the influence of M&A risk factors is taken into consideration, it is not hard to conclude that excessive M&A’ premiums will inhibit the mitigating effect of performance commitments on corporate financing constraints. The findings above validate the signal effect of performance commitment in M&As, and provide theoretical basis and practical enlightenment for the application of performance commitment in M&As.

Key words: merge and acqusition, performance committment, financial constraint, text-analysis