| A large portion of the behavioral accounting literature attempts to identify the determinants of performance in accounting-related tasks. For the most part, these studies investigate simple relationships between performance and various predictor variables (e.g., experience, knowledge, abilities, or incentives). However, behavioral accounting researchers have increasingly noted that task difficulty, knowledge, ability, and incentives all interact to affect task performance. The goal of the present study is to enhance our understanding of these interactive relationships. This goal is addressed by presenting a general model of the determinants of task performance and then testing the implications of that model in an experiment involving the information search phase of a tax research task.; In this study, 64 tax professionals engaged in a computerized tax research task involving a complex partnership tax issue. The computer created a comprehensive record of each subject's information search activity, from which measures of subjects' effort, search effectiveness, and search efficiency were obtained. The results of this experiment generally support the predictions of the model. The data show that experience is positively related to knowledge, and that knowledge is positively related to search effectiveness and search efficiency. Support for the prediction that knowledge is positively related to effort depends upon which of two measures of effort is considered. The data also indicate that the incentive manipulation had a significant, positive effect on subjects' effort levels and search effectiveness scores. Finally, the data support the interaction hypotheses that the effects of incentives on effort and search effectiveness are positively related to knowledge. |
