Informationsmængdens indflydelse på kognitivt load og beslutningskvalitet ved vurdering af regnskaber: En EED og Eye-tracking Undersøgelse

Abstract

The motivation for this research derives from the lack of current research on the rising volume of information in annual reports. This thesis uses methods from neuroscience and psychology, combined with methods from traditional accounting research, to examine how the amount of information in financial reports affects decision making for users of financial reports. Previous research has shown that the relationship between information load, which can be measured as a cognitive load, and decision accuracy can be illustrated as an inverted U-shape. This assumes that a positive correlation exists between information load and decision accuracy up until a certain point, from where an increase in information load will result in a decrease in decision accuracy. The shift in correlation occurs when the cognitive load exceeds the limited capacity of the working memory. This phenomenon is described as information overload. Based on existing literature, hypotheses were formulated and tested on the basis of a within-subjects experiment including 108 participants. The results from this thesis partially show that the amount of information in financial reports have a significantly positive effect on the cognitive load of users. The research did not find increasing amount of information to have a significant effect on decision accuracy. However, since information overload is not exclusively caused by an increase in the amount of information, the relationship between cognitive load and decision accuracy were also examined. The results from these tests partially show that a relationship, illustrated as an inverted U-shape, exists. Thus, findings show that increasing complexity of a task is positive until a certain point from where an increase in the complexity will lead to lower decision accuracy. Further results show that experienced users of financial reports do not make more accurate valuations, though their consistency in valuation differs from students when approaching the anticipated optimal amount of information. Finally, this thesis found that task learning has a significant effect on the complexity of a cognitive task. This was evident since task learning resulted in decreasing cognitive load as well as decreasing decision time for users.