A Study On The Influence Of Media Negative Reporting And Auditor Change On Audit Fee

As an important external supervision mechanism,independent auditing verifies the financial reports of enterprises in the form of audit reports and protects the interests of investors.Therefore,audit quality has always been a key issue of public concern.However,due to the characteristics of audit trust products,audit quality is difficult to observe directly.Audit fee,as the remuneration for auditor's work,can reflect audit quality and audit independence to a certain extent.Since Simunic established the influencing factors model of audit fee,it has been regarded as an alternative variable of audit quality and has become an important topic of domestic and foreign research.However,the research focuses on the characteristics of audited units and firms.With the deepening of the research,some scholars have paid attention to media coverage as an important external factor,and found that the probability of changing auditors will increase after companies are reported negatively by the media.So,will negative media coverage significantly affect audit fees? At the same time,the impact of auditor changes on audit fees under negative reports can make the mechanism between them clearer.Therefore,this paper regards negative media coverage and auditor change as an interactive variable to explore their impact on audit fees,in order to enrich the research on audit fees,help external regulators realize the necessity of auditor change as the focus of supervision,and promote the financial and economic media in China to play their role of "the hand of punishment" more effectively.Based on the analysis of the theories of journalism,communication and auditing,this paper puts forward the hypothesis of this study,and chooses the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2017 for empirical test,and then draws the following two conclusions: First,the relationship between negative media coverage and auditing fees is positive and significant,that is,the company is exposed negative.Face-to-face news will increase auditors' audit fees.Secondly,auditor changes under negative media coverage will increase audit fees.In the test results,auditor change and audit fees are negatively correlated,but under the combined effect of negative media coverage and auditor change,audit fees will increase.Based on the above conclusions,this paper finally puts forward the suggestions that the government should improve the accountant firms' responsibility system,strengthen the supervision of the media and strengthen the internal construction of the news media,so as to better implement its supervisory and governance role.The innovation of this paper lies in: Firstly,it opens up the research field of audit fees.This paper innovatively examines the impact of the interaction between negative media reports and auditor changes on audit fees,and realizes the innovation of research perspectives.Secondly,it expands the research scope of the role of media governance in the financial field.At present,scholars at home and abroad pay attention to the governance role of the media in the capital market,but few scholars have studied the impact of the media on auditors' behavior,and there are few empirical studies.This paper proves that media coverage will affect auditors' behavior through empirical tests.