關鍵查核事項對債務資金成本之影響-企業社會責任之緩和效果

Abstract

近年來，國際掀起一波審計準則改革浪潮，關鍵查核事項即為改革的重點之一。台灣規範上市(櫃)公司自2016年度之財務報告開始適用新式查核報告，並規定會計師須針對個別企業揭露不同的關鍵查核事項，以提高查核報告之透明度與資訊有用性，減緩管理階層與利害關係人間的資訊不對稱。本研究以2016年至2018年台灣上市(櫃)公司為樣本，探討我國適用新的審計準則公報後，在會計師所出具的新式查核報告書中，關鍵查核事項之揭露是否會影響企業次一年度的債務資金成本，最後的實證結果呈現顯著正相關，顯示揭露愈多關鍵查核事項，債權人將要求提高風險貼水，使企業需付出愈多借款成本。 此外，企業社會責任為當今國際環境之趨勢，在企業追求經濟發展得同時，履行其社會責任已成為企業的重要課題之一。過去文獻顯示社會責任之落實，可增加企業正面形象，並降低公司風險。關鍵查核事項將使債權人瞭解企業面臨之風險，故本研究認為關鍵查核事項可被視為一種公司風險之衡量指標，因此本研究進一步針對關鍵查核事項與債務資金成本關係之中，將企業社會責任加入作為調節因子，探討該因子對於兩者交互關係之影響。實證結果發現，企業社會責任對於揭露關鍵查核事項與債務資金成本之關係，不具有緩和效果，表示企業社會責任未能降低揭露關鍵查核事項對債務資金成本的影響。

Recently, there is a significant change in auditing standards around the world. The focus of this reformation is key audit matters. Listed companies in the stock exchange market and over-the-counter market in Taiwan should apply this new type of audit report after 2016, which requires the auditor to disclose suitable key audit matters for individual companies in order to enhance the transparency and information usefulness of the audit report. Further mitigating information asymmetry between company manager and financial statement users. The sample in this research consists of listed companies in Taiwan stock exchange and over-the-counter market over the period 2016-2018 and mainly explores whether their cost of debts is influenced by complying the new audit standards and disclosing key audit matters. The empirical result turns out that the number of key audit matters is significantly and positively related to the cost of debt. It indicates that the more key audit matters disclosed, the more companies need to pay for debt capital. Furthermore, corporate social responsibility is a trend in today's international environment. Increasingly corporate entities view their contribution to the social good as part of their development plan. Past literature reveals that committing to corporate social responsibility can increase a company’s reputation and reduce firm risk. Since the disclosure of key auditing matters enables creditors to better understand the risks companies may face, so that key audit matters may be considered as indicators of firm risk. Therefore, this research takes corporate social responsibility as the moderator to further examine the correlations between the numbers of key audit matters and cost of debts. The empirical result shows that corporate social responsibility won’t affect the relation between key audit matters and companies’ cost of debt and reveals that corporate social responsibility won’t decrease the effect of key audit matters on cost of debt.