This study contributes to the literature on IFRS adoption in several ways, which distinguish our research from two closely related studies by Wu and Zhang (2009) and Ozkan et al. (2012). First, we comprehensively discuss the mechanism through which IFRS adoption affects the use of accounting performance in determining executive compensation. We also provide direct evidence of the reduction in accounting conservatism after IFRS adoption. Combined with evidence from prior studies indicating increases in earnings management associated with IFRS adoption, our research investigates whether the changes in earnings management and in accounting conservatism play different roles in the weighting of accounting performance in executive compensation. Additional analysis suggests that in China, the positive effect of IFRS adoption on the accounting-based performance sensitivity of executive compensation is driven by the associated reduction in accounting conservatism. The second contribution of this study is to extend the literature on the effect of IFRS adoption on executive compensation to the case of China, which is substantially different from mature markets. As an emerging market, China has relatively immature capital markets, weak legal enforcement, weak auditor independence and more concentrated ownership. All of these factors influence the incentives involved in financial reporting. The lack of efficiently functioning capital markets also means that the process of adopting and implementing fair value accounting is especially challenging, and this situation leads to considerable accounting information noise. So far, there is very little empirical evidence documenting the economic consequences of IFRS adoption in emerging economies. It is widely suggested, however, that emerging markets are substantially different from developed markets in many dimensions, including institutional, organizational and market aspects of the economy and society. Our findings suggest that accounting-based performance sensitivity in China is significantly improved after IFRS adoption. A third contribution of our study is that our exploration of a single country, China, allows us to enrich our understanding on a range of factors that are generally not considered in most EU-based studies. We provide empirical evidence on the significant variation in incentives across both regions and firms. In particular, we find that the positive effect of IFRS adoption on the use of accounting performance information in executive compensation occurs only in regions with higher institutional quality and in firms more affected by IFRS adoption.