The Financial Motives Of Voluntary Accounting Policy Changes

The voluntary accounting policy changes is a hot issue of the study on the positive accounting theory all the time since the positive accounting theory came about. Scholars in china and abroad conducts a great number of effective empirical researches about the voluntary accounting policy changes, while the researches on financial motives are inadequate, which is the most direct and the most concrete reason why enterprises proceed the voluntary accounting policy changes. It is short of systematic study on financial motives of the voluntary accounting policy changes. On this foundation, this paper makes an empirical study on earnings management motivation, refinancing motivation, and investment motivation of voluntary accounting policy changes respectively. Then it comes up with some related policy recommendations to regularize the accounting policy changes behavior of enterprises in China and improve the quality of accounting information according to the conclusion from the empirical analysis.First of all, this paper summarizes, analyzes and makes a comment on the results from the researches that have already been made. Then, it analyzes the substance and forms of the voluntary accounting policy changes, and introduces the basic theory on financial motives of the voluntary accounting policy changes. This is the theoretical foundation of the empirical analysis.Secondly, this thesis makes regression analysis on the earnings management motivation, refinancing motivation, and investment motivation's influencing factors of the voluntary accounting policy changes respectively by using Logistic Model, after making descriptive statistic analysis and nonparametric test on the three financial motives of the voluntary accounting policy changes. It comes to the conclusion that: the listed companies in China have financial motives when they are making the voluntary accounting policy changes. These financial motives mainly include earnings management motivation, refinancing motivation, and investment motivation. It is the company scale that mainly affects earnings management motivation of huge amount offset behavior. The influencing factors on eliminating losses behavior of earnings management motivation include asset-liability ratio and compensation contract. The influencing factors of refinancing motivation involve the proportion of the first shareholder's shareholding, the company scale, and the major business income. The influencing factors of investment motivation include the compensation contract and the major business income.Finally, based on the analysis results, this paper brings up some related policy recommendations to regularize the accounting policy changes behavior of enterprises in China and improve the accounting information quality.