An Integrated Model to Investigate an Individual’s Behavioural

Towards using Cloud Computing

Nouf Alkhater, Gary Wills and Robert Walters

Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.

Keywords: Cloud computing, Adoption, Behavioural, Individuals, Factors.

Abstract: Cloud computing technology can bring benefits at both individual level and organisational level, for

example, flexibility and cost saving. However, there is a lack of empirical studies that examine the usage of

cloud computing technology from an individual’s perspective. In fact, the adoption of cloud services in

Middle Eastern counties like Saudi Arabia is still low compared with developed countries. Therefore, this

study aims to investigate the end users' behavioural towards using cloud computing services in Saudi

Arabia. In this paper, we propose an integrated model in an attempt to understand individuals’ attitudes and

to identify the key factors that might impact on their behaviour to use cloud technology services. The

proposed model integrates the critical factors from technology adoption theories Technology Acceptance

Model (TAM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), along with other

factors to examine the effect of these variables on end users’ behaviour.

1 INTRODUCTION

Cloud computing is the emerging technology for

providing IT services to consumers over a network

as a utility service (Buyya et al., 2009). In the past

different paradigms have been proposed such as grid

computing and virtualisation to deliver services as a

utility. However, none of these previous paradigms

succeeded in providing a public service to end users

as cloud computing does. All the essential

characteristics of cloud computing are covered by

this definition by Mell and Grance (2009): “[It is] a

model for enabling convenient, on-demand network

access to a shared pool of computing resources

(e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and

services) that can be rapidly provisioned and

released with minimal management effort or service

provider interaction.” There are three different types

of service provided by cloud computing:

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-

Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

(Armbrust et al., 2010).

Cloud computing can bring a variety of benefits

for individuals as well as for enterprises. Individuals

can access the cloud services from various places

and anytime. The cloud allows end-users to pay only

for the services they use instated of setting up an IT

infrastructure in-house (Marston et al., 2011; Buyya

et al., 2012). This can increase flexibility,

performance and reduce costs for both individuals

and organisations.

Most of studies in the literature concentrate on

identifying the cost and advantages of utlising cloud

services. However, there are few studies that

examine cloud adoption from the individual

perspective (e.g. Park and Ryoo, 2013; Sharma et

al., 2016). Therefore, this study aims to investigate

the factors that impact on individuals’ behavioural

towards using cloud computing services in a

developing country like Saudi Arabia. The usage of

cloud services in Saudi Arabia is still in the early

stages. In this paper, a conceptual model is proposed

in an attempt to examine end user's behaviour

regarding the use of cloud computing technology.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows.

Section 2 presents the proposed model to investigate

individual’s behavioural intention to use cloud

computing. The research methods that will be used

to test the model are explained in Section 3. Finally,

Section 4 provides the conclusion and future work.

478

Alkhater, N., Wills, G. and Walters, R.

An Integrated Model to Investigate an Individual’s Behavioural Towards using Cloud Computing.

DOI: 10.5220/0006404204780481

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security (IoTBDS 2017), pages 478-481

ISBN: 978-989-758-245-5

2 THE PROPOSED MODEL

As discussed in Section 1, there is a lack of

empirical studies that investigate cloud adoption at

individual level. In this paper, an integrated model is

proposed which incorporates critical factors derived

from technology adoption theory along with other

factors to examine the impact of these variables on

the end users behavioural towards using cloud

services. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

was developed by Davis (1989) and Unified Theory

of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)

was proposed by Venkatesh et al., (2003). The TAM

model and UTAUT are two of the commonly

accepted theories designed for explaining and

predicting the acceptance of new technologies at

individual level. These models measure users’

behaviour in relation the use of new information

technology and how far they accept or reject the

technology. The TAM theory analyses the impact of

two variables (perceived usefulness and perceived

ease of use) on the user's intention to use a new

technology.

In this study, the conceptual model has been

developed by integrating critical factors from TAM

and UTAUT theory, along with other factors (such

as trust in cloud technology and trust in cloud

provider) to examine cloud usage from the end

users’ perspective in Saudi Arabia. Figure 1 presents

the theoretical model for individuals’ acceptance of

cloud computing.

Figure 1: A conceptual model for individuals’ acceptance

of cloud computing.

2.1 Perceived Ease of Use

Perceived ease of use is an element of the TAM

model (Davis, 1989). It is defined as the extent to

which the end users believe that using cloud

computing services would be free of effort. This

factor plays a significant role in acceptance of a new

technology at individual level (Ghorab, 1997). It is

more likely that the cloud computing will be used by

end users when they find the technology is easy to

use. Several studies that utilised UTAUT model

have found that the relationship between perceived

ease of use and behavioural intention to use are

moderated by gender and experience. The authors

believe that the impact of this factor on end users’

intention to use cloud technology will be moderated

by gender and experience. Thus, the hypotheses are

proposed as follows:

H1: Perceived ease of use will have a positive

influence on individual's behavioural intention to use

cloud computing technology.

H1a: Gender will moderate the relationship

between perceived ease of use and behavioural

intentions.

H1b: Experience will moderate the relationship

between perceived ease of use and behavioural

intentions.

2.2 Perceived Usefulness

Perceived usefulness refers to level of benefit that

the individual perceives from utilising a new

technology. This factor is also one of the elements of

the TAM model and is similar to the element of

relative advantage in the Diffusion of Innovations

(DOI) theory proposed by Rogers (1995).

Several studies have found that this variable has

a significant impact on users’ acceptance of new

technology (Anandarajan et al., 2002). For example,

Sharma et al.(2015), found that perceived usefulness

has a strong influence on use of internet related

services. Cloud computing technology can be useful

for individuals use in different ways, the users can

access hardware and software resources from

anywhere and at anytime. This flexibility can

improve the users performance. Thus, in this study it

is believed that individuals are more likely to adopt

cloud services when they perceive significant value

from using cloud services and that gender and

experience will moderate the relationship between

the perceived usefulness and an individual’s attitude

An Integrated Model to Investigate an Individual’s Behavioural Towards using Cloud Computing

479

towards use of cloud services. So, the following

hypotheses are constructed:

H2: Perceived usefulness will have a positive

influence on individual's behavioural intention to use

cloud computing technology.

H2a: Gender will moderate the relationship

between perceived usefulness and behavioural

intentions.

H2b: Experience will moderate the relationship

between perceived usefulness and behavioural

intentions.

2.3 Trust in Cloud Technology and

Cloud Provider

Trust depends on trusting the cloud services and the

cloud providers to provide a good service without

interruption and loss of data. The lack of control

over data and the sharing of resources with other

parties in the cloud could lead to trust issues.

Alkhater et al. (2014; 2015) found that the level of

trust has a significant impact on cloud adoption in

organisations in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the present

research is premised on the belief that trust has a

relationship with the individual’s behavioural

intention towards use of cloud technology and that

the effect of this factor on an individual’s intention

to use cloud services will be moderated by gender

and experience. The following hypotheses are

proposed:

H3: Trust in cloud technology will have a

positive influence on an individual's behavioural

intention to use cloud computing technology.

H3a: Gender will moderate the relationship

between trust in cloud technology and behavioural

intentions.

H3b: Experience will moderate the relationship

between trust in cloud technology and behavioural

intentions.

H4: Trust in the cloud provider will have a

positive influence on an individual's behavioural

intention to use cloud computing technology.

H4a: Gender will moderate the relationship

between trust in the cloud provider and behavioural

intentions.

H4b: Experience will moderate the relationship

between trust in the cloud provider and behavioural

intentions.

2.4 Behavioural Intention to Use Cloud

Technology

Behavioural intention refers to the overall reaction

of persons to using cloud computing services.

Several studies have stressed that behavioural

intention has a significant positive impact towards

the usage of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003). In

this study, the individuals’ intention to use the cloud

technology is determined by their behavioural

intention towards using cloud services. It is

proposed that the perceived ease of use, perceived

usefulness and trust have a direct influence on

behavioural intention to use cloud computing.

H5: Behavioural intention will have a positive

influence on individual's intention to use cloud

computing technology.

3 METHODOLOGY

Questionnaire are among the tools commonly used

to collect quantitative data (Saunders et al., 2009). In

this study, a questionnaire will be used in order to

test the proposed hypotheses and explore the

individuals’ behavioural intentions towards using

cloud computing. Before distribution of the survey,

the participants will be introduced to cloud services

such as Google Apps, and they will be asked to try

these services. After these steps the data will be

collected through the questionnaires from students

(undergraduate and postgraduate) and staff. The

survey will consist of two sections. The first part

will include questions related to demographic

information, such as gender and education level,

while the second part will use close-ended questions

to measure the end users’ behavioural intentions

towards using cloud computing.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Cloud computing is one of the current popular

technologies which provides IT resources as utility

services. Cloud computing technology can be

beneficial for personal use not just for business use,

as the users can obtain resources in a dynamic way

and based on their needs. However, the use of this

technology at individual level is still low. This

WICSPIT 2017 - Special Session on Innovative CyberSecurity and Privacy for Internet of Things: Strategies, Technologies, and

Implementations

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research seeks to fill the gap in literature by

analysing end users’ behavioural intention to use

cloud services in Saudi Arabia, as well as to

encourage individuals to adopt cloud technology.

This paper has presented our initial model which

incorporates the influential factors from the TAM

and UTAUT models with other factors to investigate

the influence of these variables on cloud computing

acceptance from an individual’s perspective. This is

an ongoing research study, and in future a

questionnaire-based survey will be carried out in

order to test the proposed model and hypothesised

relationships. The outcomes will be published

shortly.

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