This study investigates the impact of depreciation practices on the internal decision making of local government (LG) budget officers. Prior studies focus on depreciation practices that influence decision making and policy formulation through financial performance indicators. However, such practices are also expected to affect capital asset management. Specifically, the presence of depreciation information makes it possible for budget officers to account for the burden of current and future generations such as depreciation costs and debt interests when budgeting. Thus, this study tests the impact of depreciation information on capital budgeting by conducting a survey experiment with all 1788 LGs in Japan. A questionnaire was sent to LG budget officers with two patterns of experimental groups: decision making for capital budgeting (a) without depreciation information and (b) with depreciation information. The experimental results show that budget officers’ capital budget decisions are influenced by the presence of depreciation information. This study contributes to accounting and public sector research and practice by showing the impact of depreciation information on the decision making of LG budget officers for capital budgeting.

中文翻译：

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折旧信息对地方政府资本预算的影响：一项调查实验

本研究调查了折旧做法对地方政府 (LG) 预算官员内部决策的影响。先前的研究侧重于通过财务绩效指标影响决策和政策制定的折旧做法。然而，预计此类做法也会影响资本资产管理。具体而言，折旧信息的存在使预算官员能够在预算时考虑当前和未来世代的负担，例如折旧成本和债务利息。因此，本研究通过对日本所有 1788 家 LG 进行调查实验来测试折旧信息对资本预算的影响。向 LG 预算官员发送了一份调查问卷，其中包含两种实验组模式：资本预算决策 (a) 没有折旧信息和 (b) 有折旧信息。实验结果表明，预算官员的资本预算决策受到折旧信息存在的影响。本研究通过展示折旧信息对 LG 预算官员资本预算决策的影响，有助于会计和公共部门的研究和实践。