Accounting Information Quality, Information Environment, and Audit Fees: A Literature Review

HRMARS - This paper reviews the literature on audit fees from the perspective of accounting information quality and the information environment. Existing studies have examined many factors that affect audit fees, including firm characteristics, corporate governance, regulation, disclosure, regional context, and business relationships. However, this literature is still fragmented. This review shows that many of these factors follow a similar logic. They influence audit fees by changing accounting information quality, information risk, and the broader information environment, which then affect auditors’ risk assessment and pricing decisions. Based on this view, the paper develops a more integrated framework for understanding audit fee determinants. It also shows that accounting information quality is not only a direct factor in audit pricing, but also an important channel through which different factors influence audit fees. In addition, the review identifies several gaps in the existing literature, especially the limited attention given to accounting comparability and the lack of a unified explanation of audit fee formation. The paper suggests that future research should place more focus on accounting comparability, regional institutional differences, and multidimensional measures of accounting information quality.