Opinion shopping for tax advice: The effects of client narcissism, social bonds, and message framing

Steven E. Kaszak, Govind S. Iyer and Philip M.J. Reckers

Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2024, vol. 113, issue C

Abstract: Contentious interactions can arise between a tax professional and client upon disagreement over a tax position. These interpersonal exchanges can lead to “opinion shopping” and represent a threat to voluntary tax compliance and the public interest. Opinion shopping is likely to increase in an era of rising narcissism because antagonistic narcissists are known to react aggressively to rejection of their views. To better understand drivers of opinion shopping, we conduct a quasi-experiment with 222 U.S taxpayers. We find clients with higher (lower) levels of antagonistic narcissism are more (less) likely to opinion shop and switch to another tax preparer. We also examine the efficacy of two theory-motivated moderators of client antagonistic narcissism: [1] tax professional – client social bonds and [2] persuasive messaging by the advisor. By doing so, we respond to calls to explore moderating influences on the undesirable effects of antagonistic narcissism while also providing novel insight into factors influencing taxpayer clients’ decision-making following interpersonal exchanges with a tax advisor. We find that while close social bonds and sanction warnings reduce opinion shopping among participants lower in antagonistic narcissism, they fail to do so among participants higher in antagonistic narcissism. Theory provides no basis for predicting a three-way interaction, and we find none. Contributions to the research literature, as well as implications for tax practice and policy internationally, are also discussed.

Keywords: Narcissism; Antagonism; Accountant-client relationships; Persuasive messaging; Social bonds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368224000229
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:aosoci:v:113:y:2024:i:c:s0361368224000229

DOI: 10.1016/j.aos.2024.101562

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Organizations and Society is currently edited by Christopher Chapman

More articles in Accounting, Organizations and Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().