The Effect Of Accounting Information Displayed In Graphical Form For Investors To Judge And Decision Making

The focus of the traditional financial information disclose is to study the content of the information included in the financial reports. With the development of economics, social behavior, a growing number of studies have found that the way to disclose information has an important influence on decision-makers’ behavior and the decision value. The information content has been constantly improving, but the research on the disclosure forms still rare.For the studies of these problems, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, we investigated the influence of the form and investor character on the decision-maker in different condition. By the way of experimental design, we investigated the influence of table and picture forms on the professional investors and non-professional investors under the condition of simple tasks and complete tasks. We select Master in Professional Accounting as non-professional investors and auditors&appraisers and other professionals as professional investors. Finally, we pronounce two hypothesis and the inspect results prove them.The experimental results show that the graphic form of the accounting information does not affect the judgment of professional investors but affect the non-professional investors under the simple tasks; the table from of the accounting information affects the judgments of professional investors and non-professional investors. We also inspect the decision-making efficiency. We found that the form of accounting information does not affect the professional investors, but affect the non-professional investors under the simple tasks; the form of accounting information does not affect the professional investors an the non-professional investors under the complex tasks.Therefore, it is suggested that information providers should fully consider the characteristics of different types of investors and their cognitive model to provide them the matching reports format to help them make right decision. And the investors should select the appropriate information report format according to characters of tasks and their own knowledge to reduce cognitive effort, to improve decision-making efficiency.