Identifying Factors Influencing Tendency to Cheat in Accounting by Emphasizing Fraud Triangle Theory

The purpose of this study is to identify factors influencing the tendency to cheat in accounting by emphasizing the fraud triangle theory. Scientific and literary fraud has detrimental effects that tarnish the professional status of the scientific community. This research is in terms of practical purposes that society consists of accounting instructors of different universities in the country. For this purpose, by obtaining the opinion of 170 accounting instructors in the country in a simple random method in 2020, this issue was investigated.The effect of the dimensions of the fraud triangle including pressure (financial pressure and work pressure), opportunity (control and monitoring and technology development), and justification (unfair competition) on the tendency of fraud in accounting instructors was investigated by the partial least squares technique and structural equations in PLS software. Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between the studied factors and the tendency to cheat in accounting instructors, the severity of which is 61. Also, the study of research hypotheses showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between financial pressure (54%) and work pressure (43%) and the tendency to cheat. Also, a positive and significant relationship was observed between unfair competition and the tendency to cheat at the level of 19%. Other research findings also showed that there is no significant relationship between control and supervision and technology development with the tendency to cheat in accounting instructors. The general finding of this study indicates that more attention is paid to the tendency of fraud and plagiarism in the field of accounting and it is necessary to pay more attention to it.