Abstract: The characteristics of board of directors, ownership structure, capital structure, corporate finance, the value of the company are latent variables, which bring a challenge for the quantitative research on their relationship. To address this issue, a comprehensive analysis framework utilizing the SEM technique is proposed. The process of SEM modeling has two steps. In the first step, the latent variable is measured by using factor analysis approach. In the second step, the relationship between latent variables is estimated through path analysis method. For illustration, our methods is applied to the listed company in China. In the empirical analysis, the direct effect and indirect effect of board of directors', ownership structure's, capital structure's and corporate finance's influence on ability of the listed company value creation are estimated. The empirical results show that: direct effects of the board characteristics' and ownership structure's are not significant, while the indrect effects are significant. Capital structure has both direct effects and indirect effects, and corporate finance has only direct effect. Further, the influence degree on ability of the listed company value creation is: capital structure, ownership structure, corporate finance, board characteristics in sequence.

Key words: board characteristics, capital structure, listed company value creation, structure equation model