Is Neuroaccounting Taking a Place on the Stage? A Review of the Influence of Neuroscience on Accounting Research

Abstract

Insights and technologies from neuroscience research can help accounting scholars more deeply understand how decision-makers physically and cognitively process and react to accounting information and controls. We conduct a systematic review of accounting literature to evaluate whether and how accounting scholars are incorporating neuroscience research into their work and building a field of ‘neuroaccounting.’ To do so, we identify literature that relates accounting research questions to neuroscience research, addresses accounting questions or tasks but has implications for neuroscience or neuroaccounting research, or investigates accounting questions using neuroscience technologies. We then classify that literature into two broad topic areas analogous to the decision-facilitating (how individuals process information) and decision-influencing (how individuals respond to controls) roles of accounting, and map relationships within each topic over time. We observe that literature in accounting is coalescing into a new field, neuroaccounting, in ways that mirror the pattern of development of a similar field, neuroeconomics–indicating that neuroaccounting is indeed taking a place on the stage of behavioral accounting research. Our review provides a framework for future research at the nexus of neuroscience and accounting that provides unique insights into the ‘black box’ of cognitive processing in accounting contexts.