| In the past few decades, China’s economic and social development hasmade great achievements, which on the other hand brings out many newsocial contradictions. Since2000, the national financial expenditures havebeen accounting for more than15percent of GDP and the ratio increasingyear by year, however, the public departments have not been focused on theeconomic benefit when using or even wasting public resources. The publicattention to government responsibility and government economic efficiencycontinues to rise, and the government and public organizations need toimprove their management performance in order to obtain the public trustand discharge their responsibility. In the context, carrying out theGovernment Performance Audit (GPA) has become an inevitable choice bygovernment audit offices.The National Audit Office and local governmentaudit bureau at all levels have played an important role in promoting GPA,and their development plans always stress the need to increase the proportionof the GPA in government auditing.However, the development of GPA inChina has suffered many problems and the level of actual development is afar cry from the planning objectives by the national audit office. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore the factors that impede the development ofGPA in China.Given the existing literatures about GPA are almost analysis from theperspective of government auditor which ignore the audited side and theinteraction between the auditor and auditee, moreover, previous studies aremore about normative research and the researches tend to lack theoreticalsupport and empirical evidence.Due to the special government audit systemand institutional background in China, the audited side (government agencyand the public sector) plays a vital role in promoting the GPA’s development.Therefore, based on the perspectives of audited side and the interactionbetween the auditor and auditee, this paper analyses the influential factorsthat constraint the GPA’s development in China.We can see from the existing literatures and information that theauditees have more negative effect on the GPA’s implementation in ourcountry. The auditees’ low acceptance to GPA and their low demand for GPAhinder the development of GPA to a large extent. Focusing on those practicalissues and the particular research perspective, this paper is mainly carried onas follows:(1) Considering the interaction between auditing offices and the auditeesand the characteristics of performance audit supervisory system, the papermodels the GPA supervisory system based on the evolutionary game theory.By analysing the development regularity of GPA system, the papertheoretically shows why China’s GPA has suffered inadequate development.(2) We conduct a survey which investigates officials on the country level andabove coming from government agencies and public sectors, and investigate their view on several important factors for successfully carrying out GPA inChina.(3) Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in socialpsychology, the paper empirically studies on the various factors related to theauditees’ acceptance to GPA with Structural Equation Modeling.(4) Thepaper analyses the general mechanism of auditees’ demand for GPA firstly,then it empirically examines the factors that impact the auditees’ demand forGPA.By studies above mentioned, the following conclusions are drawn:(1) Considering the characteristic of performance auditing supervisorysystem, the study shows that it’s the lower penalties for "un3E"(3E is theabbreviation of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness) auditee and thehigher auditing cost that result in the unsuccessful development of GPA inChina, and it makes the auditing supervisory system turn into a "bad locked"state. When determining the penalty strength to "un3E" behavior, policymakers should consider the officials’ personal benefit coming from un3Ebehavior, the probability that they will be exposed by the public and theauditing risk; The relative cost of audit offices is related to the auditing risk,the loss due to auditing failure, the penalty because of no implementation ofGPA and the benefit coming from implementation, and the public’s exposestrength. The public’s expose strength is an effective complement to thegovernment audit supervision which should be considered in policy making.(2) By surveying the government officials (mainly from the non-auditingdepartment, some from the auditing department), we find there are nearlyhalf respondents insisting that government audit offices should not getinvolved into the government performance evaluation. By dividing the respondents into two groups according to whether he comes from auditingdepartment, we find that the officials who are from non-auditing departmentare less understanding of GPA compared with those from auditing department,they have lower positivity to carry out GPA, they have lower evaluation ongovernment auditors’ competency, and they are more reluctant to publish theauditing results. The officials think the most difficult thing in GPA is tomeasuring the effects of government programs which would occur too far inthe future, and distinguishing between the results produced by the programand results caused by other factors; Lack of laws and regulations about GPAis still one of the greatest barriers in GPA’s development rather thanexpending social resources. Currently, government audit results have limitedimpact on the audited entity and the principal person in charge, moreover, thediscipline and punishment are always more focusing on the event rather thanthe person.(3) Empirical results show that the "attitudes" and "subjective norms" inthe theory of planned behavior can explain the auditees’ acceptance to GPA ina better degree. The auditees’s attitudes toward performance auditingpositively and significantly impact their acceptance to performance auditing,and their perceived organizational support to GPA can also positively impacttheir attitude and accptance to GPA. The results suggest that mere supportfrom the national audit offices is insufficient to advance the GPA’sdevelopment, and the government cadres at all levels should strengthen thepublicity and support to GPA which will not only promote the auditees’cognition but also enhance their accptance to GPA. We did not find strongevidence for the relationship between "perceived behavioral control"(the degree of difficulty to implement GPA in this paper) and the behaviorpreference for accepting performance auditing.(4) Empirical results show that there are significant regional differencesin the GPA’s institutional efficiency in China, and we find GPA’s "suggestionand improvment" effect is stronger in the region where the institutionalenvironment is better, however, the "suggestion and improvment" effect hasnot played an active effect on the auditees’ demand for GPA. In addition, theauditees’ demand for GPA also have significant regional differences. Therespondents coming from the region where the economy is higher developedand the legislative level is higer have lower demand for GPA.We posit thereare two reasons for the empirical result, on the one hand, the GPA’s"suggestion and improvment" effect has not fully play its role in thegovernment management activities, on the other hand, the audit results’ usingis asymmetric which only focus on the negative audit results and ignore thepositive side. Giving the "punishment" effect of GPA is stronger in thosedeveloped areas, the auditees’ demand are relatively lower there. |
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