Presenting a Pattern for the Effect of Measures of Audit Report and Company Characteristics on Audit Report Lag given Structural Equations

The efficiency of financial reporting is considered as one of the important features of annual reporting quality. It is usually hidden in the timeliness of accounting information, which is among the qualitative characteristics of accounting information. The usefulness of information disclosed by companies reduces as lag increases. The objective of this research is to present a pattern for the effect of measures of audit report and company characteristics on audit report lag given structural equations in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In the research, the independent variables are measures of audit report and company characteristics, and the dependent variable is audit report lag. The research method is applied-correlational. Data was collected from 148 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the time period of 2011 to 2018, and analyzed by Stata 12, SPSS and Smart-PLS. The method used for collecting data was from the Rahavardnovin software. Also, the hypotheses were tested by the multivariate linear regression test and structural equations. According to the results from testing the hypotheses, measures of audit report (auditor’s opinion, last year’s audit report lag, reporting risk and auditor independence) and corporate characteristics (financial distress, company size, good and bad news, disclosure quality, and float index) have significant effect on audit report lag.