The bright side of flight delay: How do flight delays affect auditing quality?

Abstract

This study explores how auditors' emotions, specifically negative moods triggered by flight delays, impact auditing quality. Utilizing flight delays during audit assignments as a mood indicator, weather conditions at departure airports serve as an instrumental variable to provide a robustness check between flight delays and audit outcomes, employing a two-stage least squares model. The findings suggest that such negative moods improve auditing effort and quality, as evidenced by reduced future accounting restatements and increased audit fees. The positive effect of flight delays on auditing quality is consistent across different tests and measures. This study highlights the significance of auditors' emotional states on their professional performance, indicating a unique angle on auditing quality research by focusing on the emotional well-being of auditors as influenced by external factors such as flight delays.

Keywords

• flight delay
• audit fees
• accounting restatement
• negative mood