Auditors’ sensitivity to business risk under business risk auditing

Abstract

This study uses Chinese data and a difference-in-differences design to investigate the effect of the adoption of business risk auditing (BRA) on auditors’ sensitivity to business risk. We find that BRA adoption has an incremental positive effect on the relationship between business risk and audit hours in non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) but not in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). This result suggests that BRA increases auditors’ sensitivity to business risk in NSOEs. This effect is more pronounced when a client firm has a more complex business or the auditor is a non-Big10 domestic audit firm. The results of further tests show that an increase in audit hours due to BRA adoption results in an improvement in audit quality in NSOEs but not in SOEs. In addition, BRA adoption also has an incremental positive effect on the relationship between business risk and audit fees in NSOEs but not in SOEs.