Parental Influence as a Moderator: Evidence from Indonesia’s Accounting Student’s Intentions to Pursue Public Accounting Careers

Abstract

The public accounting profession plays an important role in maintaining the credibility of financial information, yet accounting students’ intentions to pursue this career may be shaped by both individual expectations and family influences. This study examines the effects of career motivation, financial rewards, and professional recognition on accounting students’ intentions to pursue public accounting careers and tests parental influence as a moderator. Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory and Expectancy Theory, the study uses a quantitative cross-sectional design and PLS-SEM. The sample comprises 336 accounting students from universities in LLDIKTI Region VIII (Bali and NTB). The results indicate that career motivation has a positive and significant effect on career intention, whereas financial rewards and professional recognition do not show significant direct effects. Parental influence significantly moderates all three relationships, although the moderation of financial rewards requires verification of the bootstrapping tail specification because the reported t-statistic and p-value are not aligned under a conventional two-tailed test. The findings extend career-choice research by positioning parental influence as a contextual factor that shapes how students translate career-related motivation, financial considerations, and professional recognition into intentions to pursue public accounting.