@article{carrillo_pennington_zhang_2022, title={Is an Emoji Worth a Thousand Words? The Effect of Emoji Usage on Nonprofessional Investors' Perceptions}, volume={36}, ISSN={["1558-7959"]}, DOI={10.2308/ISYS-2020-030}, abstractNote={Emojis act as non-verbal cues to disambiguate and communicate affect and are increasingly used in online corporate disclosures. Emotion work, a concept founded in social psychology, suggests that individuals adjust their behavior as emotions are evoked or suppressed. Despite the growing evidence that emojis may influence judgments and decisions due to their deliberate expression of context and affect, the accounting research community has yet to investigate emojis’ impact. We experimentally explore whether emojis can soften nonprofessional investors’ perceptions of bad news or enhance perceptions of good news. We find that emojis modestly suppress participants’ positive emotions on positive news, influencing their investment-related judgments and decision-making. Subsequent data collection fails to replicate the initial findings in a less experienced participant pool, suggesting that investing experience may play a role. Our study enhances our understanding of the unintended consequences of emojis and introduces a sociology-based principle into the accounting literature.}, number={2}, journal={JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, author={Carrillo, Hilda E. and Pennington, Robin and Zhang, Yibo}, year={2022}, pages={1–15} }
 @article{kelton_pennington_2020, title={Do Voluntary Disclosures Mitigate the Cybersecurity Breach Contagion Effect?}, volume={34}, ISSN={["1558-7959"]}, DOI={10.2308/isys-52628}, abstractNote={
 In this study, we investigate the negative impact of a cybersecurity breach on a bystander (i.e., non-breached) firm in the same industry, referred to as investment contagion effects, and whether voluntary cybersecurity disclosures mitigate these effects. Using an experiment with nonprofessional investors, we provide strong evidence of investment contagion effects. However, we also find a portion of investor participants perceive the breach as positive news for the bystander firm, a phenomenon known as competition effects. Our evidence suggests contagion effects are dominant over competition effects, and cybersecurity disclosures provided prior to the breach announcement attenuate contagion effects. Additionally, we find cybersecurity disclosures provided subsequent to the breach announcement can reduce the magnitude of investment contagion effects. Our study informs standard setters and firms as we find some evidence that voluntary disclosures are effective in lessening investment contagion effects.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, author={Kelton, Andrea Seaton and Pennington, Robin R.}, year={2020}, pages={133–157} }
 @article{kelton_pennington_2020, title={If You Tweet, They Will Follow: CEO Tweets, Social Capital, and Investor Say-on-Pay Judgments}, volume={34}, ISSN={["1558-7959"]}, DOI={10.2308/isys-52449}, abstractNote={
 Chief executive officers (CEOs) are increasingly using social media to disclose information and communicate with investors. Although findings from archival research show some benefits to social media use, little is known about how the social nature of this disclosure channel affects individual investors. Accordingly, we develop a mediation model based on social capital theory that predicts social media disclosure channels lead investors to perceive enhanced feelings of connectedness (i.e., social capital) with the CEO, resulting in more positive judgments of the CEO. Specifically, our model predicts CEO disclosures via Twitter, versus web-based disclosures, lead to enhanced perceptions of social capital, which in turn positively impact investor recommendations for CEO compensation. Using an experiment with individual investors, our results provide robust support for our theoretical mediation model. Our findings enhance our understanding of how CEOs' social media use influences individual investors and have implications for standard setters, investors, and firms.}, number={1}, journal={JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, author={Kelton, Andrea Seaton and Pennington, Robin R.}, year={2020}, pages={105–122} }
 @article{pennington_schafer_pinsker_2017, title={Do Auditor Advocacy Attitudes Impede Audit Objectivity?}, volume={32}, ISSN={["2160-4061"]}, DOI={10.1177/0148558x16641862}, abstractNote={Biased evaluation of evidence exists when an auditor either over-emphasizes evidence that supports management assertions or over-emphasizes evidence against management assertions. This study examines if an auditor’s advocacy attitudes lead to bias in information search for audit evidence. We measure the range of advocacy attitudes of individual auditors and hypothesize that auditors at either end of the advocacy spectrum may impede the objectivity of evidence gathered. Results from 60 Big 4 auditors indicate that advocacy attitudes affect both initial judgments and consequent search strategies of auditors. When initial judgments are client-favorable, all auditors exhibit search strategies focused on finding evidence to take a more conservative position; however, when initial judgments represent an unfavorable client position, auditors with lower advocacy attitudes exhibit a stronger tendency to search for additional evidence against a client-favorable position, consistent with a confirmation bias. Conversely, auditors with more neutral attitudes plan a more objective search effectively mitigating the bias. Aggregate findings establish an important link between bias and information search that may manifest itself in auditor training procedures and be of interest to auditing regulators.}, number={1}, journal={JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING AUDITING AND FINANCE}, author={Pennington, Robin and Schafer, Jennifer K. and Pinsker, Robert}, year={2017}, month={Jan}, pages={136–151} }
 @article{borthick_pennington_2017, title={When Data Become Ubiquitous, What Becomes of Accounting and Assurance?}, volume={31}, ISSN={["1558-7959"]}, DOI={10.2308/isys-10554}, abstractNote={ABSTRACT Big Data and the data analytical software for analyzing it have developed far enough that some trends have emerged. People are clever. Leave them alone with resources and they will do interesting things with them, giving both intended and unintended consequences. This commentary stems from the 2016 Journal of Information Systems Research Conference (JISC2016) on Big Data. It highlights the landscape of Big Data, including how organizations are starting to use data in different ways. While it is true that some of what this commentary offers does not, strictly speaking, require Big Data with respect to volume, diversity, and structure, the connotations that Big Data bestowed have prompted new ways to stage and use data. For example, “70% of firms now say that big data is of critical importance to their firms” (Malone 2016). The articles in this issue were presented as papers at JISC2016. They treat different aspects of the growing availability and use of data in organizations.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, author={Borthick, A. Faye and Pennington, Robin R.}, year={2017}, pages={1–4} }
 @article{pennington_kelton_2016, title={How much is enough? An investigation of nonprofessional investors information search and stopping rule use}, volume={21}, ISSN={["1873-4723"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.accinf.2016.04.003}, abstractNote={Regulators are concerned that the information overload in the current Internet-based disclosure environment may cause investors to overlook important information. To gain a better understanding of the information set gathered by investors, this study incorporates theories from information systems research to examine the cognitive stopping rules used by investors to terminate information search. We survey nonprofessional investors to gain insight into what information they gather and when they determine they have enough information to stop searching and make an investment decision. Demographic analysis shows that investor characteristics are associated with the particular stopping rule used. In addition, results show that the stopping rule used affects the amount and type of information gathered. We find that, in general, investors include very little financial information in their search, and the amount gathered depends on the stopping rule employed. Our results call into question the decision usefulness of accounting information for nonprofessional investors and should be of interest to accounting information systems researchers, regulators, and accounting practitioners.}, journal={INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, author={Pennington, Robin R. and Kelton, Andrea Seaton}, year={2016}, month={Jun}, pages={47–62} }
 @article{kelton_pennington_2012, title={Internet financial reporting: The effects of information presentation format and content differences on investor decision making}, volume={28}, ISSN={["1873-7692"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.chb.2012.01.028}, abstractNote={Internet financial reporting provides investors with several options regarding which type of financial disclosures to view and the format in which to view these. However, research suggests that these options may result in unintended cognitive effects leading to less optimal decision making. Accordingly, this study examines the individual and joint impact of presentation format and information content on nonprofessional investors’ decision making within the Internet financial reporting environment. Alternative presentation formats which vary in their navigational flexibility are studied to isolate the effects attributable to each format. Specifically, hyperlinked financial information is compared to paper-based financial information. The effects of information content differences are also examined by investigating whether an unaudited letter from a company’s management differentially affects hyperlink and paper users’ investment judgments. We conduct an experiment in which graduate business students, proxies for nonprofessional investors, make financial investment-related judgments and decisions. Our results show that hyperlink users used less effort on the investment task than users of paper-based information. Furthermore, the management letter influenced the paper-based users’ forward-looking judgments more so than the hyperlink users. The findings have implications for academic research, financial disclosure regulation and information systems design.}, number={4}, journal={COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR}, author={Kelton, Andrea Seaton and Pennington, Robin R.}, year={2012}, month={Jul}, pages={1178–1185} }
 @article{pennington_tuttle_2009, title={Managing impressions using distorted graphs of income and earnings per share: The role of memory}, volume={10}, ISSN={1467-0895}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accinf.2008.10.001}, DOI={10.1016/j.accinf.2008.10.001}, abstractNote={This study investigates the role that memory plays in interpreting and using distorted graphs that mislead the user of the financial information. It draws upon the literatures concerning memory, impression management and effective graph design. In order to examine whether reliance on memory for distorted graphs leads to different impressions of the data, we conduct an experiment in which we manipulate the type of graph distortion and whether memory of the graph is required by the decision. We present evidence that individuals receiving misleading graphs are more likely to misinterpret underlying data trends and that memory moderates the effect depending upon the type of distortion used to mislead the individual. The resulting data interpretation errors lead to more positive judgments and investment decisions than would otherwise be warranted. Thus our findings suggest that graph distortions mislead users into incorrect conclusions about the underlying data and that these interpretation errors persist in memory and affect judgments and investment decisions. We extend the prior literature, which has not considered the direct effects of graph interpretation or the effects of memory, and provide a baseline for investigating the effects of memory on impression management.}, number={1}, journal={International Journal of Accounting Information Systems}, publisher={Elsevier BV}, author={Pennington, Robin and Tuttle, Brad}, year={2009}, month={Mar}, pages={25–45} }
 @article{pennington_tuttle_2007, title={The effects of information overload on software project risk assessment*}, volume={38}, ISSN={["0011-7315"]}, DOI={10.1111/j.1540-5915.2007.00167.x}, abstractNote={ABSTRACT}, number={3}, journal={DECISION SCIENCES}, author={Pennington, Robin and Tuttle, Brad}, year={2007}, month={Aug}, pages={489–526} }