Research On The Comprehensive Influencing Factors For Audit Quality Of Accounting Firms

Audit scandals that happened in successive years put the quality of audits conducted bycertified public accountants (CPA) under widespread questioning from the public, and theirconfidence in audits done by CPAs are seriously damaged. If the quality of audits done byaccounting firms cannot be improved effectively, not only public confidence in the wholeaudit industry will be seriously reduced, the economic environment will also be in adeteriorating trend. Therefore, researches on audit quality are of great importance, which notonly serve as an important basis for supervision and decision making conducted bystakeholders such as the government’s supervision departments, investors and creditors, butalso provide protection for the interests of investors and creditors.In this paper, audit quality of accounting firms and its many influencing factors arestudied in an all-round way from the perspective of quantitative model, which may havetheoretical significance for researches on audit quality of accounting firms. Through reviewand researches on the comprehensive influencing factors of audit quality, this paper definesrelevant conceptions such as accounting firm and audit quality, and the comprehensiveinfluencing factors for audit quality of accounting firms are summarized from the perspectiveof some basic theories including principal-agent theory, the theory of rational-economic manand deep-pocket theory.Comprehensive influencing factors for audit quality of accounting firms are furtherdemonstrated through analyses on some models such as DEMATAL, Logist and multipleregression. The direct relationship among the factors is clarified and a conclusion is drawn,namely that among the factors, ability of practitioners has the biggest influence and reputationof accounting firms is at the very center; audit tenure is the only resulting factor among thesix factors, and the others are all causal factors. It is theoretically verified that reputation ofaccounting firms is in an important position, while ability of practitioners is of greatsignificance, and audit tenure is the result of other five factors, which is placed in the lastposition in the adjustment on audit quality. Research on comprehensive influencing factorsfor audit quality is made in the way of regarding audit opinions of listed companies and netprofit of companies as the direct alternative variables for audit quality.