Conservatism in goodwill auditing(CGA hereafter), manifested in pushing firms to record goodwill impairment in a timely and accurate manner, helps to improve the transparency of firms goodwill information. From the prospective of economic driver of auditing behaviors, this paper investigates how abnormal audit fees(AAFs hereafter) affect CGA. Our results show that: (1)With the increase of AAFs, auditors exhibit greater auditor conservatism; (2)The positive associations between AAFs and auditor conservatism are stronger when AAFs are positive and couldnt be explained by auditors bargaining power. The channel analysis shows that AAFs can restrain firms earnings management activities, which further push them to record goodwill impairment timely and accurately. Lastly, we find that normal audit fees also improve CGA, and total audit fees are positively related to CGA. Overall, our findings support the cost view of audit fees. Abnormally high audit fees can encourage accounting firms to devote more audit efforts, which in turn helps them identify and restrain firms’ impairment avoidance, and then provide more conservative audit reports.