How Motivation Traits and Incentives Interact to Influence Auditor Professional Skepticism

SUMMARY We conduct two experiments to examine how reward incentives and auditors’ motivation traits interact to influence skepticism when auditing complex estimates. In Experiment 1, we predict and find that rewarding auditors increases skepticism, but only for extrinsically motivated auditors. In contrast, auditors with higher intrinsic motivation are not influenced by rewards. In Experiment 2, we predict and find that rewarding auditors with tangible rather than intangible rewards increases skepticism, but only for extrinsically motivated auditors. For auditors with higher intrinsic motivation, the type of reward does not significantly affect their level of skepticism. Our findings underscore the importance of considering auditors’ motivation traits when evaluating the effectiveness of reward incentives designed to promote skepticism.