Adoption Intention on Cloud Storage Services: the Role of Technology Trust, Privacy and Security Concerns

Cloud storage is getting increasing attention in the last few years. By moving data to locationtransparent centralized facilities or providers, cloud storage services offer significant economic advantages to consumers and enterprises. However, concerns have been raised regarding the duplication, dissemination, and deletion of data stored on the cloud. In addition, data leakage would be another major concern whether accidental or due to a malicious hacker attack. Thus, the formation of trust in technology is particularly essential for users to cope with the uncertainty of information privacy because users relinquish their ultimate control over the fate of their data. Trust in technology involves two major trusting mechanisms, namely cognitive trust and emotional trust. Cognitive trust, which is also known as trusting belief, refers to the users’ rational expectations that the technology under scrutiny will have the necessary attributes to rely on. Three features of cognitive trust have been considered as essential elements for cloud storage applications namely, openness, consent, and access. Meanwhile, emotional trust refers to users’ feeling of security and comfort to rely on the technology in use. It contains three different components, namely competence, relatedness, and autonomy. A model is proposed to depict the relationship between technology trust, perceived information privacy and security concerns. This research extends trust research on information privacy and information security concerns and enrich existing literature on the formation of trust. The results of this research could provide specific technology traits that vendors can adopt in to build up users’ trust in the technology.