Using Ajzen’s TPB Model to Explain the Ethical Intentions of Chinese Accounting Professionals

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a cross-sectional study of the moral belief systems of 368 Chinese accounting professionals (i.e. 186 auditors and 182 salaried accountants). It is a first study of the ethical intentions of local Chinese auditors and salaried accountants based on Ajzen's (1985) Theory of Planned Behaviour. A self-rated questionnaire is used to examine the antecedents to behavioural intention using a familiar scenario based vignette. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was employed to validate each construct of TPB before a path analysis was performed. Salaried accountants were found to be significantly less conservative than auditors in their intention, when stating their agreement with the decision when faced with a moral dilemma about whether to reject a supervisor's directions to manipulate financial reports. The results of this study have also demonstrated that the TPB can be applied when studying the ethical behaviour of Chinese accounting professionals, and the findings supp01t that Chinese accounting professionals' attitude toward the ethical behaviour, their perceptions of subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control over of the behaviour are positively associated with their ethical behavioural intentions. However, Chinese auditor group reveals a 51 % of variance in the ethical intention which is significantly higher than the salaried accountant group (i.e. 38%).