Toward understanding the self-efficacy of external auditors during COVID-19: empirical testing of traditional sources and virtual audit proficiency
Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting
ISSN: 1985-2517
Article publication date: 8 November 2022
Issue publication date: 1 September 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Auditors’ self-efficacy (SE) represents their level of confidence in improving their audit performance. This may be a crucial factor for auditors to perform effectively during the health crisis of COVID-19. This study aims to build on a social cognitive perspective to assess the SE of auditors during the coronavirus of 2019 (COVID-19) and to anticipate that mastery experience, verbal and social persuasion, vicarious experience, physiological and emotional states and virtual audit are determinants of auditors’ SE during COVID-19.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on data from Saudi Arabia, this study surveyed all auditors using an online questionnaire and collected 193 useful responses. Thus, this study analyzed the data using primary statistical tests and a structural equation model of partial least squares.
Findings
This study observes that auditors feel confident in their ability to perform audit activities as well during COVID-19 as at other times. This study also documents that VEs, physiological and emotional states and virtual audits play significant roles in SE. In further analyses, this study observes that auditors who are affiliated with big4 audit firms moderate the positive association between virtual audit and SE. All these results are verified under several econometrical appraisals and held constant.
Originality/value
This study provides a number of theoretical and practical implications.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments and suggestions. Also, the authors are deeply grateful to audit professors and partners for commenting on the questionnaire. Furthermore, the authors would like to convey their pleasures to audit firms/offices and all auditors who participated in this study, as well as the auditors who helped in distributing the questionnaire.
Availability of data and material: Full research data can be supplied upon request from the corresponding author.
Conflicts of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Funding: No grant or fund supporting this research was received at the time of submission.
Citation
Baatwah, S.R., Ali Al-Ansi, A., Almoataz, E.S. and Salleh, Z. (2023), "Toward understanding the self-efficacy of external auditors during COVID-19: empirical testing of traditional sources and virtual audit proficiency", Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 867-894. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFRA-06-2022-0223
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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