Comparing the investment decisions of accounting practitioners and students: an empirical study on the adequacy of student surrogates

The use of students as surrogates for non-students has been a controversial issue in behavioural accounting research. However, the empirical evidence on student surrogates suggests that students can be adequate surrogates for practitioners in decision-making tasks. This present paper seeks to examine the adequacy of accounting students as surrogates for their practising counterparts in an investment decision task. For this purpose, an experimental decision task used in Milne and Patten [Acc., Audit. Acc. J. 15 (3) (2002) 372] is replicated using student subjects. The results indicate that, in general, students’ short-term and long-term investment decisions compare well with those of the practitioners. These findings encourage more empirical investigations into the adequacy of students as surrogates for accounting practitioners.