Effects of Accounting-Method Choices on Subjective Performance-Measure Weighting Decisions: Experimental Evidence on Precision and Error Covariance
通过实验研究人们如何主观决定绩效指标的权重，发现大多数人会受指标精度和误差协方差影响，但常犯方向性错误，且对会计变更的溢出效应认识不足。
Performance-measure weights for incentive compensation are often determined subjectively. Determining these weights is a cognitively difficult task, and archival research shows that observed performance-measure weights are only partially consistent with the predictions of agency theory. Ittner et al. (2003) have concluded that psychology theory can help to explain such inconsistencies. In an experimental setting based on Feltham and Xie (1994), we use psychology theories of reasoning to predict distinctive patterns of similarity and difference between optimal and actual subjective performance-measure weights. The following predictions are supported. First, in contrast to a number of prior studies, most individuals' decisions are significantly influenced by the performance measures' error variance (precision) and error covariance. Second, directional errors in the use of these measurement attributes are relatively frequent, resulting in a mean underreaction to an accounting change that alters performance measurement error. Third, individuals seem insufficiently aware that a change in the accounting for one measure has spillover effects on the optimal weighting of the other measure in a two-measure incentive system. In consequence, they make performance-measure weighting decisions that are likely to result in misallocations of agent effort.