The Effect of Audit and Client Business Risks on the Auditor’s Client Acceptance Decision: An Experimental Study

The objective of this research is to study and analyze the impact of the auditor’s evaluation of client business and audit risks on his client acceptance decision. In addition, the research aims to test the impact of the auditor’s experience on the relation between his evaluation of client business risk/audit risk and his client acceptance decision. The researcher relied on a sample of 97 auditors working in Egyptian audit firms in the position of audit partners, audit managers and senior auditors.To test the research hypotheses, the researcher designed a 2X2 between subjects experimental design and found a negative and significant effect of the audior’s evaluation of client business risk and/or audit risk on his client acceptance decision. In addition, the impact of audit risk was stronger and more significant in comparison with the client business risk on the client acceptance decision.To test the impact of the auditor’s experience on the relation between his evaluation of client business risk and audit risk on one side and client acceptance decision on the other side, the researcher designed a multivariate regression model and didn’t find a significant impact of experience in this issue, which indicates that the negative impact of higher risk (whether client business risk or audit risk) exceeds the positive impact of the auditor’s experience on the client acceptance decision.Accordingly, the researcher recommends that audit firms in Egypt pay more and increasing attention towards auditors’ training especially in the field of professional judgement and the client acceptance decisions