We hypothesize and provide empirical evidence that higher institutional investor inattention is associated with lower audit quality. We employ an inattention measure that captures the extent to which institutional investors are distracted by attention-grabbing events irrelevant to the focal firm. Results suggest that a higher degree of institutional investor inattention is associated with a lower propensity of a going-concern opinion, a lower probability of the auditor reporting a material internal control weakness, and a higher likelihood of the audit client misstating the financial statements. Further analyses show that these associations vary by auditor litigation risk, their workload pressure, auditor industry expertise, and analyst coverage. Overall, our findings reveal that while institutional investors play an important monitoring role, the distractions they face undermine the quality of monitoring they provide.

我们假设并提供经验证据，表明机构投资者的关注度越高，审计质量越低。我们采用了一种疏忽措施，该措施反映出机构投资者因与焦点公司无关的引人注意的事件而分散注意力的程度。结果表明，较高的机构投资者关注度与持续关注的观点的倾向性较低，审计师报告重大内部控制弱点的可能性较低，以及审计客户错报财务报表的可能性较高有关。进一步的分析表明，这些关联因审计师诉讼风险，工作量压力，审计师行业专业知识和分析师覆盖率而异。总体而言，我们的发现表明，虽然机构投资者扮演着重要的监督角色，