Contextual Effects in Tax Research: An Experimental Investigation of Adaptivity and Expert Performance in an Information Search Task
Magro, Anne Marie
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/87171
Description
Title
Contextual Effects in Tax Research: An Experimental Investigation of Adaptivity and Expert Performance in an Information Search Task
Author(s)
Magro, Anne Marie
Issue Date
1998
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Eugene Willis
Department of Study
Accountancy
Discipline
Accountancy
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Psychology, Experimental
Language
eng
Abstract
Based on a detailed analysis of the two tax decision-making contexts, planning and compliance, I predict that tax practitioners who know that the contexts differ in particular ways will conduct broader information search in planning than in compliance. I also predict that the nature of the decision is different in each context, resulting in the use of forward reasoning in the compliance context and backward reasoning in the planning context. Finally, I predict that the ability to adapt information search to the context is a component of expert performance in the tax-research task. I tested my hypotheses in an experiment in which decision-making context was manipulated between-participant and participant knowledge and decision-quality was measured. Six measures of information-search breadth were employed as dependent measures. As predicted, participants who knew that the contexts differed in the specified ways conducted broader search in planning than in compliance while participants without such knowledge did not, participants demonstrated greater use of backward reasoning in planning than in compliance, and those participants who were perceived as higher-quality decision makers conducted broader search in planning than in compliance while the lower-quality decision makers did not.
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