The relative influences of the audit report and financial statements in financial reporting

The purpose of this study was to examine factors hypothesized to affect the degree of influence of an auditor's report on user perceptions of a business. The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (ELM) was used as the context from which factors were hypothesized to affect the audit report/financial statement influence. The audit reports examined were an unqualified (standard) report and an unqualified report with a fourth "going concern" paragraph. Hypotheses derived from the ELM were supported. Experimental subjects manifesting lesser amounts of motivation to complete the task were influenced more by the audit reports, and the influence of the audit reports was greater for businesses experiencing lesser amounts of financial distress.