Abstract The rapid development of financial technology (FinTech), while empowering non-financial companies, is profoundly reshaping their risk structure and information environment. This inevitably presents new challenges to independent auditing, whose core function is risk assessment. As the direct providers of risk pricing and assurance services, whether and how auditors' risk perception, assessment, and response logic are influenced by FinTech has become key to understanding the evolution of audit behavior in the digital economy. Using a sample of A-share non-financial listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2011 to 2023, this study examines the impact and mechanisms of FinTech on audit pricing, exploring whether and how FinTech influences auditors' risk responses. The findings reveal that FinTech significantly increases corporate audit fees. Mechanism analysis indicates that FinTech primarily raises corporate audit fees by increasing business complexity, which in turn generates risk premiums, and by increasing auditors' workload, thereby raising audit effort. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect of FinTech on corporate audit fees is particularly pronounced in larger firms, highly innovative firms, and firms located in China's eastern regions, as well as those receiving higher auditor attention. By integrating FinTech and auditors' risk decision-making into a unified analytical framework, this study not only deepens the theoretical understanding of audit risk transmission mechanisms in the digital economy but also provides a theoretical foundation for constructing new financial regulatory paradigms adapted to the digital economy, as well as for fostering technology-enabled dynamism in the auditing industry. These insights hold important implications for promoting high-quality development in both the financial and auditing sectors.
Zou et al. (Mon,) studied this question.