新闻媒体作为资本市场的参与者和监督者,构造了上市公司的信息环境,形成了审计判断的外部意见,影响着审计结果的形成。然而,媒体评价对审计判断的影响及机理尚不明晰。本文基于新闻传播学中“沉默的螺旋”和“图式”理论构建了分析框架,运用2006-2012年A股数据,研究了媒体评价与审计意见之间的相关关系以及审计师风险容忍对其的调节作用。结果发现,上市公司媒体评价越高,其被出具标准无保留意见可能性越高,且随着审计师风险容忍提升而更显著。同时,审计师对不同方向盈余管理所表现容忍程度的不同,会导致相应风险容忍调节效应显著不同。结果表明,审计师出于意见认同动机会参考媒体意见,在“同化”和“顺应”机制影响下其行为表现出一定程度的“从众”效应。该研究不仅丰富了审计意见形成的文献,更揭示了外部意见影响审计判断的具体机制。
As the participator and overseer in the capital market, the media built up a pseudo information environ- ment. Based on theories "The Spiral of Silence" and "Schema", an analysis framework has been built. The sample from 2006 to 2012 has been used to investigate that whether or not auditor has been affected by media, how risk tol- erance and category influence the relationship between auditor and media opinions. The study finds that the media sentiment is positively related to the probability of standard auditor opinion. And the additional risk tolerance enlar- ges the aforementioned positive effect. Also, the different kinds of risk will result in different additional risk toler- ance enlargement performance. These findings show that auditors take media information and emotion into account during the opinion adjustment. This paper not only enriches the audit opinion literature but also explains the mecha- nism of auditors affected by the media.