The Relationship between Audit Expectation Gap and Audit Report Readability

The present study assesses the relationship between the audit expectation gap and reports' readability. The study method is descriptive-correlational based on released information from listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2014-2020 using a sample of 128 firms (816 observations). The method used for hypothesis testing is panel data linear regression. The results from hypothesis testing show a negative and significant relationship between the audit expectation gap and audit report readability based on the text length index. However, no association exists between the total audit expectation gap and the report readability based on the Fog index. The relationship between the illogical expectations gap and the audit report readability based on the Flesch index was insignificant. The negative and significant relationship between the illogical expectations gap and the audit report readability based on the Fog index and between total audit expectations and audit report readability based on the Flesch index. Since the present study is carried out in emergent financial markets, like Iran, with a highly competitive audit market, it can provide helpful content to figure out the relationship between total and illogical expectations gap and audit report readability.