Research On Disclosure Status And Influencing Factors Of Key Audit Matters

Since the UK issued the revised auditing standards in 2013,more and more countries and regions have begun to reform the audit report.China has also made new regulations on the audit report in 2016.The core change is that the key audit matters have been added to the audit report.Since then,the key audit matters have become a new hotspot in the field of audit research.Previous studies focused on the consequences of disclosure of key audit matters,such as whether it can bring incremental value of information and the impact of disclosure on different subjects.This paper focuses on the disclosure status of key audit matters in China,trying to analyze the factors affecting the disclosure characteristics.This paper uses the data of listed companies that have disclosed key audit matters from 2016 to 2018,and uses mean test and regression research methods to analyze the status of key audit matters disclosure and the impact of audit firm and auditor characteristics on key audit matters disclosure.The study found that:(1)Most companies disclose two key audit matters.On average,one is industry-specific and one is company-specific.Among all the topics,the subject of revenue recognition and the disclosure of impairment of accounts receivable are the most.Compared with the audit response section,the text length,number length and proportion of the description section are higher,but the text similarity of the audit response section is higher.In addition,the text features show a trend of becoming more and more concentrated over time;(2)Among the characteristics of the audit firm,compared with other factors such as audit tenure and industry expertise,the size has a wider impact on the characteristics of the disclosure: such as the four major firms significantly affect the length of the text,the length and proportion of the number,the number of industry-specific key audit matters.The eight major audit firms significantly affected the length of the text,the length of number and similarity;(3)Among the personal characteristics of auditors,gender has a greater impact on disclosure characteristics than other factors such as years of practice and industry expertise.We can find that: Male auditors disclose more matters and have longer text,but female auditors disclose more numbers and provide more accurate information;(4)Compared with the auditor’s industry expertise,the audit firm’s industry expertise has more extensive and important influence.This article provides evidence that the characteristics of audit firms and auditors affect the disclosure of key audit matters and expands research on key audit matters.