Anchoring effect in managerial decision-making in accountants and managers: an experimental study

Abstract

The objective of this work was to analyze, by means of an experiment, if the type (positive or negative) and the level (simple or complex) of economic-financial information influence the anchoring effect of accountants and managers in a process of managerial decision-making. To do so, an experimental methodology targeting a sample of 86 Accountants, 68 Managers and 118 people with different professional activities (control group) was used. The results showed, in the first test without differentiation of factors (type and level), that about 96% of the participants have the anchoring effect, leaning towards minimum and maximum estimates of sales revenue, operating expenditure and result. In addition, the ANOVA and the Approximate Permutation Test brought significant evidence that the anchoring effect in minimum projections can be influenced by the type of information, not being significant for anchoring in maximum projections and for the level of information on both estimates (minimum and maximum). Finally, the conclusion is that positive information increases the anchoring effect and negative information decreases the anchoring effect in minimum estimates in relation to the low anchor.