上市公司ESG评级分歧的审计溢价效应——基于信息生产的视角

Audit Premium Effect of ESG Rating Divergence of Listed Companies:An Information Production Perspective

近年来,ESG评级发挥着日益重要的审计定价功能并影响着审计质量,但囿于缺乏完善的评级体系,不同评级机构间存在明显分歧,导致其对审计溢价产生不确定性影响。基于此,以2015—2020年沪深A股上市企业为样本,实证探究ESG评级分歧的审计溢价效应。研究发现,ESG评级分歧会显著提高审计定价,但是审计费用的增加并未显著改善审计质量。机制检验发现,ESG评级分歧延长了审计时滞、增加了关键审计事项的披露篇幅,并加剧了企业的财务风险和舞弊风险,即审计费用的增加是对其工作量及风险增加的补偿,而未能显著提升审计质量。异质分析发现,企业及时的信息披露、分析师的准确预测以及审计师的丰富经验能够缓解ESG评级分歧的负面冲击。

In recent years,ESG rating has played an increasingly important role in audit pricing and influenced audit quality.However,due to the lack of a perfect rating system,there are obvious differences among different rating agencies,resulting in uncertain impact on audit premium.Based on this,the paper takes Shanghai-Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2020 as samples to empirically explore the audit premium effect of ESG rating divergence.It is found that ESG rating divergence can significantly improve audit pricing,but the increase of audit fees does not significantly improve audit quality.The mechanism test found that ESG rating divergence extended the audit delay,increased the length of disclosure of key audit matters,and intensified the financial risk and fraud risk of enterprises,that is,the increase in audit costs was only compensation for the increase in workload and risk avoidance,but failed to significantly improve audit quality.Finally,through the heterogeneous analysis,it is found that timely information disclosure of enterprises,accurate forecasts of analysts and rich experience of auditors can mitigate the negative impact of ESG rating divergence.