Mill The Long Audit Tenure Damage The Quality Of Audit?

Whether in daily life or in corporate decision-making,in an uncertain environment,if people cannot get the answer through a standardized method,they tend to use the experience of similar past situations or other existing information as a reference point,and make some adjustments based on this reference point to make new decisions.This decision-making process is called "anchoring effect" in psychology.However,because of the information asymmetry between the CPA and the audited entity,plus the nature of the accounting information,the environment of the audit business has obvious characteristics of uncertainty.Thus,many decisions in the audit business rely on professional judgment of the CPA,rather than just some mechanical processes.In addition,many previous researches based on experiments have also proved that in this context,many decisions of CPAs are affected by the anchoring effect.if the CPA is disturbed by the anchoring effect during the actual practice,will it harm the final result and quality of the audit work?Based on this consideration,this paper thought about the audit tenure,and believes that as the audit tenure increases,the CPA may be subject to at least two kind of Anchoring Effects:"anchor in the understanding of the audited entity"and "anchor in the selection of audit ideas,methods and procedures".So,this paper analyzed in detail how these two kinds of anchoring effect may cause the audit quality to gradually decrease with the extension of the audit term.In addition,in order to further verify its own analysis,this paper uses an empirical analysis method to test our hypotheses and design a series of analysis of mediating and moderating effects to further demonstrate that what role may the anchoring effect play in the relationship between audit tenure and audit quality.Specifically,this paper used publicly available financial and auditing data of China's listed companies,and selects the data from 2013 to 2018 as a sample.Then this paper measures audit quality from the perspective of the audited entities'earnings management and audit opinion types.And the audit quality was calculated excluding the impact of the merger and restructuring of the audit firm.Based on above,relevant issues were empirically tested and analyzed.The results showed that:(1)Affected by the anchoring effect,the audit tenure is significantly negatively related to the audit quality.With other conditions unchanged,the longer the audit tenure,the worse the audit quality.(2)Audit input has played a significant intermediary role in the relationship between audit tenure and audit quality.As the audit tenure increases,CPAs may reduce audit input under the influence of anchoring effects,and this reduction in audit input may eventually have an adverse effect on the quality of the audit.(3)If the audited entity is in face of larger uncertainty,the negative correlation between audit tenure and audit quality due to anchoring effects will be aggravated,while if the accounting firm is under a strict regulatory environment,the negative correlation between audit tenure and audit quality due to anchoring effects will be significantly alleviated.(4)The audit expertise of the audit firm and large audit firms may effectively reduce the influence of the anchoring effect to a certain extent,thereby reduce the negative correlation between audit tenure and audit quality.(5)Researches based on the individual level of the signing CPA also indicated that there is a significant negative correlation between the tenure of the signing CPA and the audit quality,and the auditing expertise of the individual signing CPA can effectively alleviate the he bad effect to quality caused by the increase of CPA's audit tenure.