Perceived IT Security Risks in Cloud Adoption: the Role of Perceptual Incongruence between Users and Providers

Despite the widely recognized prevalence of IT security risk concerns in users’ Cloud adoption, little is understood about how Cloud providers assess IT security risks and in what ways potential disagreements among providers and potential users on the IT security risks of Cloud services affect users’ adoption intentions. Drawing on perceptual congruence research and risk perception theory, our study examines matched survey responses of providers and potential users of their Cloud services. Our findings show a consistent pattern of perceptual differences across all relevant IT security risk dimensions of Cloud Computing. We also show that this disagreement between the providers of Cloud services and their potential users has strong adverse effects on important downstream user beliefs and, ultimately, on users’ intentions to adopt the services. We discuss implications for research and practice.