We investigate whether and how CEO neuroticism affects the text-based communicative value of annual reports using S&P 1500 firms. We employ annual report readability as the proxy of the text-based communicative value of annual reports. We find that CEO neuroticism is significantly and positively related to annual report readability due to the increase in the CEOs’ incentives to alleviate outside investors’ information uncertainty perceptions. Moreover, CEO neuroticism improves annual report readability via the mechanism of less severe management-equity agency problems, enhancing the CEOs’ incentives of alleviating outside investors’ information uncertainty perceptions. In addition, we also find that the CEO neuroticism effect becomes weaker when the firm has higher internal governance quality, better firm profitability, and greater management resources. Finally, our findings are robust when considering endogeneity issues and controlling for other CEO personality traits.