A Comprehensive Model of Factors Affecting the Expectation Gap between Auditors and Users of Financial Statements: A Multidimensional Grounded Theory and Structural Equation Modeling

The present study seeks to explain a comprehensive model of factors affecting the expectation gap between auditors and users of financial statements by using the qualitative method of multidimensional grounded theory.

The statistical population of the study consists of university faculties, partners of auditing firms and Users of Financial Statements, of which 42 in-depth and semi-structured interviews and Multidimensional Grounded Theory were conducted in this regard using mixed purposive sampling.The structural equation modeling was used to measure the model validity and PLS software was used to fit the model.

The factors affecting the expectation gap are individual and knowledge gap, irrational expectations, and complexity of the business environment, while the grounded factors include auditors' adverse performance, inefficient standards, lack of adequate monitoring on auditors' performance, and the legal gap resulting from divergence in the interpretation of laws and regulations.

The government and non-competitive economics and managerial and political factors had the highest impact on the expectation gap between auditors and users of financial statements with a coefficient of 0.658 and 0.601, respectively, and a wide range of users and knowledge gap between different stakeholder groups had the least impact on the expectation gap between auditors and users of financial statements with a coefficient of 0.270 and 0.394, respectively.