會計師查核產業離散度與審計品質之關聯性研究

Abstract

本研究旨在探討會計師查核產業離散度與審計品質之關聯性，並預期查核客戶產業離散度較大之會計師會因產業知識難以轉換及查核工作複雜度的提升，導致審計品質下降。會計師查核產業離散度變數係依行政院公布之「產業關聯統計編製報告」，將會計師查核產業分布狀況以產業間距離之概念計算衡量；而審計品質則係以盈餘品質及財務報表是否重編做為衡量標準。實證結果顯示，當以盈餘品質衡量審計品質時，會計師查核產業離散度在不同計算方法和參照資料下，大多對受查客戶之盈餘品質有顯著負向影響，僅有極少部分之影響未達顯著水準，支持會計師查核產業離散度越大，審計品質越差之假說。而當以財務報表是否重編衡量審計品質時，會計師查核產業離散度僅在以方法二計算時，對受查公司財務報表重編之可能性有顯著正向影響，若以方法一計算時該影響則不顯著，故當以財務報表是否重編衡量審計品質時，僅在以方法二計算下，支持會計師查核產業離散度越大，審計品質越差之假說。

This study aims to explore the relationship between auditor industry dispersion and audit quality. It is hypothesized that auditors with a higher dispersion of audit client’s industry will experience a decline in audit quality due to the difficulty in transferring industry-specific knowledge and the increased complexity of audit tasks. The variable of auditor industry dispersion is measured based on the concept of industry distance, calculated according to "The Report on Input-Output Statistics" published by Executive Yuan. Audit quality is measured by earnings quality and whether financial statements are restated. The empirical results show that when measuring audit quality by earnings quality, auditor industry dispersion mostly has a significant negative impact on the earnings quality of audited clients under different calculation methods and reference data, with only a few instances where the impact was not significant. This supports the hypothesis that greater auditor industry dispersion leads to lower audit quality. Additionally, when measuring audit quality by whether financial statements are restated, auditor industry dispersion only significantly positively impacts the likelihood of financial statement restatements when calculated using Method 2; this impact is not significant when using Method 1. Therefore, when measuring audit quality by whether financial statements are restated, the hypothesis that greater auditor industry dispersion leads to lower audit quality is only supported when using Method 2 for calculation.