The Study Of The Effects Of The Media Attention On The Audit Quality

As the last barrier before the financial information entering the capital market, the research of audit quality has always been the issue of academic concern. Audit quality is not only related to the characteristics of the listed companies and accounting firms, external environment factors can also influence audit quality. External environment includes institutional arrangements, such as laws.regulations and government intervention. Does financial media affect audit quality? With the role of the media in the capital market becoming increasingly prominent, and its role in the dissemination of information as well as the role of supervision and governance has gradually been concerned. This thesis is from the perspective of media attention, which is independent of the demand and supply of the audit, to analyze the mechanism and effect of audit quality.In this thesis, we select the A shares motherboard listing corporations as the samples from 2011 to 2013, to examine whether the audit quality will be influenced by the media attention, and to further examine the role of the accounting firm’s reputation and property rights for the relationship between the two. The research found that:(1) Media attention will bring about the improvement of audit quality;(2) The media environment development level and audit quality are positively related; (3) The reputation of the accounting firm will increase the effect of the media attention on the audit quality. (4) The property right has a moderating effect on the relationship between the media attention and audit quality.Based on the theory of reputation mechanism, agenda setting theory, the spiral of silence theory, we use the normative research, to test the media attention’s impact on the mechanism of audit quality and build regression model for empirical testing. After that, this thesis takes the reputation of the accounting firm and the property right into consideration, to further examine the role of the accounting firm’s reputation and property rights for the relationship between the two.The research content of this thesis can be divided into six parts:The first part is the introduction, combined with the system background and economic development of our country, this thesis introduces the topic and its significance, and summarizes the research content and structure arrangement, and finally expounds innovation of this thesis.The second part is the literature review, first of all, starting from the two major functions of the media, then reviews the related literature of the audit quality. Given the content of this article, just reviews the influence factors of audit quality and measure methods, so as to inspire further research on the base of the previous study.The third part is to define the concept and theoretical basis, first of all, media related concepts and functions are defined. Combining journalism and communication science and behavioral finance theory to analysis the mechanism of the effect of the media attention on audit quality. This lays theoretical foundation for empirical research in the subsequent parts.The fourth part is the research design, through the specific analysis of the reputation mechanism, agenda setting theory and the spiral of silence theory, and put forward the research hypothesis of this paper. The research design includes the construction of the model, sample selection and variable definition.The fifth part is the empirical analysis, in order to study the influence of the media attention on the audit quality. Firstly, descriptive statistics on the characteristics of the data gives a preliminary understanding, followed by the Spearman correlation coefficient analysis method for the independent variables of the total linear test, and finally using logistic regression analysis, testing the impact of media attention on the audit quality and whether this effect has a significant difference between the Big-Four and Non-Big-Four accounting firms, "state-owned" and "non state-owned" holding companies.The sixth part is the empirical conclusion and policy recommendations. According to the analysis of the empirical results, the conclusion and the policy recommendations are put forward.And finally it points out the limitation and shortcomings as well as the research direction in future.The innovation of this thesis analyzes the role of media attention on audit quality in the research perspective, from the aspects of property right and corporate reputation, and analyzes the influence of financial media, third party supervision system, on audit quality. Expanding the research scope of the media management as well as enriching the research of the influence factors of audit quality.Secondly, it measure the quality of audit in the two dimensional angle of view. Auditing quality has the characteristics of social, advanced, concealment and subjective, which is difficult to measure. From the aspects of qualitative analysis and quantitative measurement, this thesis combines CPA audit opinions and earnings management of listed companies to re-examine the quality of audit standards in a two-dimensional perspective.