An Experimental Research On Accounting Fraud Psychological Mechanism Based On Anchoring Effect

Along with the increasingly serious accounting scandals of listed companies, people have gradually started to recognize the harm to economic, social and personal caused by fraud. Scholars,who research on white-collar crimes, found out that the financial loss caused by white-collar fraud behavior was far more than street crime, and its impact on the quality of a person’s life is a deadly (Friedrichs,2009). The white-collar criminals made a great harm to society through emptying the real economy, increasing the gap between rich and poor, corroding the trust between people etc, brought by fraud(Ford,2008)."A small leak will sink a great ship",moreover the small leak seems to be more and more big now. The fraud will corrode the wealth made by society if we don’t try to find and kill it in the beginning, and as the fraud spread, it can still make the moral value of the person distorted, which in turn will make more serious consequence.Although at present, the domestic and foreign scholars do large amounts of research on accounting fraud from different aspects, like fraud theory, fraud motivation, fraud means, fraud identification and so on. However, these studies are mostly from "factor" to "behavior", neglecting a very important part of fraud, the psychological mechanism of the accounting fraud behavior, this is partly because the people’s psychological process is extremely complex and difficult to refine, on the other hand, maybe it’s because the experiment subject is difficult to obtain. However, as behavioral economics becomes mature and more and more people aware of the "limited rationality" of human, it’s a trend to further the accounting fraud study by combining behavioral economics theory. Anchoring effect is a very important theory in behavioral economics, some scholars have even suggested that the behavioral economics is a kind of generalized anchor, so accounting fraud psychological research based on the anchoring effect can effectively solve the root causes of accounting fraud behavior.The main line of this paper is to explore the psychological mechanism of accounting fraud, which is divided into five parts, including six chapters, the concrete structure and contents are listed as below.The first part is chapter1,the introduction of the paper. This part mainly introduces some basic questions, including the background, motivation, research significance, main content and the choroid of research, which laid a foundation for the following.The second part is chapter2, the literature review. Based on different research angles of the motivation of accounting and anchoring effect and their related theories, this part is mainly intend to explore the development of psychological mechanism of accounting fraud, through summarizing the related literature both at home and abroad. In addition, this part also points out the possible shortcomings of existing literature and potential researching direction of accounting fraud behavior.The third part includes chapter3, the theory concept and chapter4, the analysis and hypothesis. First of all, this part first give a detail definition of each related theories. The accounting part introduces the definition and characters of accounting fraud. In order to understand the anchoring effect better, the anchoring effect part listed the cases which it originated and the development of the psychological mechanism of accounting fraud. Second this part analysis the relation between accounting fraud and anchoring effect, and put forward the experiental research hypothesis at last.The fourth part is included in chapter5, scene experiment. Which includes the experimental research scheme and the experimental results based on the hypothesis aroused in part4. As the main part of this paper, we designed the fraud behavior situation decision-making cases based on the research assumptions and the interview of enterprise on-the-job managers and used the experimental research through questionnaire to explore the participants’psychological mechanism of fraud decision-making process.The fifth part is the last chapter, the research conclusions and policy recommendations. This part both includes the research conclusion based on the experimental results and the corresponding policy recommendations respectively for the government, the express, the enterprise and the personal himself. In addition, this part also includes the limitations of this paper and the enlightenment for the future.This paper mainly draws the following conclusion:First, the individuals judgment will be effected by the value of the anchor, namely, will be influenced by anchoring effect. Second, external anchor will finally be converted into internal anchor, based on which people will make wrong decisions when the external environment change, due to the insufficient adjustment. Third, the actors in the comprehensive judgment based on a variety of factors affecting the accounting fraud, will overestimate the joint probability of events, and underestimate the probability of a separate incident. Fourth, the behavior of the group will affect individual behavior, but the influence is not very significant.The paper’s innovation point are as following:On the one hand, in order to put forward the corresponding frauds preventive strategy,we combine accounting fraud and anchoring effect as well as its related theories together and give a thorough analysis of the relationship between them. On the other hand, we adopt the experimental method to research accounting fraud, which not only broaden the choroid of research but also expand the research methods.