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The Tone from Above: The Effect of Communicating a Supportive Regulatory Strategy on Reporting Quality
Author(s) -
VAN DUIN SANNE R.,
DEKKER HENRI C.,
WIELHOUWER JACCO L.,
MENDOZA JUAN P.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of accounting research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.767
H-Index - 141
eISSN - 1475-679X
pISSN - 0021-8456
DOI - 10.1111/1475-679x.12205
Subject(s) - moderation , business , intermediary , quality (philosophy) , tone (literature) , accounting , orientation (vector space) , marketing , psychology , social psychology , art , philosophy , geometry , literature , mathematics , epistemology
In collaboration with the Authority for the Financial Markets in the Netherlands, we manipulate the content of official letters that instruct financial intermediaries to submit a mandatory self‐assessment. As part of the Registered Report Process, we submitted our hypotheses, experimental procedure, and planned statistical analyses before data collection. We predicted that a request indicating a supportive regulatory attitude has a positive effect on reporting quality on average. We also predicted this effect to be stronger for small firms and for firms with a long‐term orientation, and to become negative for firms with a short‐term orientation. Planned analyses show that a supportive letter reduced reporting quality unless firms had a long‐term orientation, supporting the moderating influence of time horizon, but providing no support for the expected average effect or for moderation by firm size.