Enhancing auditors’ professional skepticism through nudges: an eye-tracking experiment
研究通过实验证明，助推（如社会规范和理由说明）能增强审计师的专业怀疑，进而提升审计质量，眼动追踪实验揭示了其认知机制。
This article studies whether nudges – that is, gentle alterations of people’s behaviour – increase audit quality. Although the utility of nudges is well-established in behavioural sciences, their applicability and efficacy have been less studied in accounting and auditing. To bridge this knowledge gap, the study extends nudge theory to financial audits, offering experimental evidence of the impact of social norms and justification nudges on auditor behaviour. A factorial 2 × 2 between-subject experiment (social norms and justification) shows that nudges amplify professional skepticism, a critical indicator of audit quality. A follow-up eye-tracking experiment involving an audit task identifies the underlying cognitive mechanism of this effect; nudges heighten auditors’ visual attention to pertinent information, thereby refining their evaluations of audit evidence and increasing their professional skepticism.