A Multigroup Analysis of Students’ Intention to Major in Accounting before, during, and after the Recession: Emergence of a Professional Ethics Perception

This study investigates the determinants of students\u27 intention to major in accounting (IMA) in pre-recessionary, recessionary, and postrecessionary time periods. By examining four factors (perceived professional ethics (PE), job market consideration (JMC), social influence (SI), and self-efficacy (SE)) in accordance with the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we address two primary research questions. The first question concerns whether the four factors are related to students\u27 IMA before, during, and after the recession. The second deals with whether there is a shift in the relative importance of the factors between the pre-recessionary, recessionary, and post-recessionary periods. We use structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis of structural invariance to analyze these issues. The results show that all four factors have significant structural weights in each period, with the exception of perceived PE in the pre-recessionary period. In terms of students\u27 IMA over the three periods, perceived PE, JMC, and SI become factors of greater importance during the recessionary and post-recessionary periods, while SE decreases in relative importance. © 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Students' beliefs, attitudes and intentions to major in accounting

This study extends the literature that uses the theory of planned behaviour in examining the factors that impact on students' intentions to major in accounting and non-accounting disciplines. A survey of a sample of business students enrolled in an introductory accounting course in a New Zealand University was conducted to gather data about their intended academic majors, and their beliefs and attitudes towards majoring in accounting and non-accounting. The results show that three factors (personal, referents, and control) are determinants of students' intention to major in accounting or other business disciplines. Further analysis revealed that the students' major intentions are influenced by important referents' perceptions. In particular, parents appear to have a stronger influence on students' intentions to major in accounting. Comparisons of differential personal perceptions by accounting and non-accounting majors revealed that accounting majors hold positive perceptions of some of the qualities of the study of accounting and the accounting profession. Significant differences were also found in the control perception between accounting and non-accounting major students.Accounting major, accounting education, accounting career, accounting profession,