Factors Influencing Audit Quality in Listed Companies: A Literature Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/1xhpqv79Keywords:
Audit quality, influencing factors, audit independence, corporate governance.Abstract
Audit quality reflects the effectiveness of an audit in detecting material misstatements and ensuring financial reporting reliability. In recent years, with the improvement of audit standards and the increasing public attention to financial fraud, audit quality has become a research hotspot in both academia and practice worldwide. This paper systematically summarizes the factors that affect the audit quality in listed companies, including auditor-specific factors, firm-specific factors, and external factors. While most current studies focus on traditional influencing factors, there is limited research that explores the use of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence in auditing and their impact on audit quality. This presents a promising area for future research. Besides summarizing the research methods and main findings of existing literature, this study also provides suggestions for both future researchers and regulators. Listed companies need to strengthen internal governance and enhance financial information transparency to provide a solid foundation for audit work. Regulators should build strengthen regulations to prevent low-fee competition and reduce audit fraud.
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