Welcome to the Radboud Educational Repository
Here, Radboud University presents theses written by students affiliated with various bachelor’s and master’s programmes at the university, as well as papers from students of the Radboud Honours Academy and publications in the Radboud journal Ex Tempore.
Recent Submissions
Item Understanding the acceptance and resistance of Explainable AI in financial auditing and accounting(2025-07-08)This study explores the psychological and organizational factors that influence the acceptance and resistance of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) in a financial auditing and accounting context. A mixed-methods approach combined semi-structured interviews with a quantitative survey. The survey was based on established models such as TAM, UTAUT, Status Quo Bias, Psychological Reactance and Algorithm Aversion. Most hypothesized predictors were not statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. However, trust in the system and prior experience with AI emerged as key factors that influence both acceptance and resistance. Interview insights helped to explain these quantitative results. They also revealed additional factors not captured in the research models that could influence user attitudes towards XAI such as privacy, legal and ethical risks, and environmental impact. These findings suggest that traditional technology acceptance frameworks may need to be extended when they are applied to newer systems like XAI. Practically, organizations should not only focus on the technical functionality of the system but also on building user trust, offering learning opportunities in practice and address broader professional concerns. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on human-centred AI adoption and also gives concrete suggestions for future research and organizational implementation.Item Repeat Offenders in the Stock Market: How Violation History and Short Selling Affect Price Recovery(2025-07-04)Previous research shows that markets react sharply to corporate misconduct, yet how repeat offending shapes stock prices and short-selling pressure is underexplored. This study asks whether firms with a history of financial misconduct recover more slowly than first-time offenders and whether abnormal short selling magnifies that gap. Using an event study design, 297 misconduct events by 113 U.S. listed firms between 2016–2023 are analyzed. Cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) and abnormal short interest ratios (ASIRs) are computed across several windows, and OLS regressions with firm-clustered errors and inverse-overlap weights are estimated. Repeat offenders underperform first timers by 0.9 % over both the [-1; +1] and [+2; +5] windows, signalling short term underreaction. Interaction tests show that elevated pre-event ASIR further declines immediate CARs for repeat, but not first time offenders. Recidivists also attract about 0.02 % higher abnormal shorting, though this gap fades within a month. By adding a recidivism lens, covering a broad set of financial offences, and linking them to pre-event short selling, the paper contributes to the financial crime, market efficiency and short selling literature. The evidence supports escalating sanctions for repeat offenders and using short interest spikes as supervisory flags, while investors should treat recidivism and abnormal shorting as joint signals of near term downside risk.Item Incentivising change: The role of subsidies in stimulating sustainability(2025-07-04)This study aims to unveil the influence of subsidy allocation on corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance, thereby complementing existing studies that primarily aim at the influence of sustainability performance on subsidies. Anchored in the substitution argument from the tax avoidance literature, this study expects subsidies to act as a replacement for private financing to increase corporate ESG performance. By merging subsidy data from the Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker (GJF ST) and ESG and control variables from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), the analysis covers 9,980 US firm-year observations across 2014-2023. Through a staggered difference-in-difference (DiD) design using the Callaway & Sant’Anna (CS) estimator, the findings provide suggestive evidence of a positive influence of subsidy on ESG performance. It implies that firms might bolster their sustainable behaviour through investing in initiatives when leveraging on the funds they free up when being granted a subsidy. This study underscores the potentialities to government authorities and corporations alike to align their agendas and interests, positioning subsidy allocation as a catalyst for sustainability.Item The influence of ESG performance on corporate financial misconduct: the fraud triangle theory(2025-07-04)This research investigates the relationship between ESG performance and financial corporate misconduct in the US, using a dataset with 242 unique US-based companies from 2010 till 2020. A two-way fixed effect difference-in-differences (TWFEDD) regression is employed to analyze the relationship between ESG performance and corporate financial misconduct. For the TWFEDD regression, the scandal of Volkswagen in 2015 is chosen as the event, due to the increase of misconduct awareness and scrutinization, which should lower perceived opportunities and rationalization for committing fraud. In this regression, high ESG firms act as the treated group due to the higher media focus, which channels the increased pressure to mostly high ESG firms. The results indicate that high ESG firms before the Volkswagen scandal are significantly negatively correlated with corporate financial misconduct when compared to low ESG firms, as expected by the theory. But after the event, high ESG firms are significantly correlated with a lower decrease in corporate misconduct compared to low ESG firms, contradicting existing research. After further robustness tests using a propensity score matched and instrumental variable regression, it shows that both results are robust. Using different regression techniques and independent measures shows only robust results for the post-Volkswagen event result.Item Counter-Stereotypical Priming: Exploring Children’s Gender Norms & Sports Preferences(2025-07-08)Gender differences in sports often start already early in life and are shaped by social norms and stereotypes. This thesis explores whether counter-stereotypical priming, through short stories that challenge traditional gender stereotypes in sports, can influence how children think about and choose sports. A behavioural experiment was conducted with Dutch primary school children aged 7 to 10, where different classes were assigned to either a neutral or counter-stereotypical story condition. After hearing the stories, children chose between boxing and gymnastics, then answered questions about what sport they thought others expected them to choose, what sport they would recommend to others and how suitable they found each sport for boys and girls. The results show that girls who heard counter-stereotypical stories were significantly more likely to choose boxing, which is a sport that is typically seen as masculine. No significant effects were found for boys or on broader perceptions of gender and sport suitability. These findings suggest that a short priming intervention can shift individual preferences, particularly among girls, but may not be enough to affect broader gender norms.
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