Greening Data Centres: the Motivation, Expectancy and Ability Drivers

Data centres are the backbone of the digital economy and the widespread adoption of cloud services, business analytics and big data will continue to accelerate their demand. Because data centres consume a significant amount of energy, research efforts are needed to identify what facilitates actions to implement practices and technologies to either retrofit to or architect green data centres. This paper address this issue drawing from institutional, expectancy and motivation–ability theories and based on survey data collected from 96 data centres. The findings indicate that performance and effort expectancy form the strong order drivers and together with ability will lead to the implementation of practices and technologies that improve the energy efficiency of data centres. In addition, institutional isomorphic forces serve as first order influences to shape expectations and trigger actions to develop skills and polices and to allocate financial resources that facilitate the implementation of greening practices. The paper further discusses a number of implications for research and practice.