Impact of Personality Traits (BFI-2-XS) on using Cloud Storage

Antonin Pavlicek

1 a

and Frantisek Sudzina

2 b

Department of System Analysis, University of Economics in Prague, 4 W. Churchill sq., Prague, Czech Republic

Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, København, Denmark

Keywords: Personality Traits, BFI-2-XS, Cloud Storage.

Abstract: Cloud storage is a trending issue shifting away from computing as a product that is purchased, to computing

as a service that is delivered to consumers over the internet from large-scale data centres - or "clouds". The

research focused on impact of Big Five Inventory personality traits on use of cloud storage services. The

research was conducted in the Czech Republic. The respondents were 478 university students. Gender, age,

and type of student's job were used as control variables. With regards to the results, openness to experience

and gender influence the acceptance rate of cloud storage services.

1 INTRODUCTION

Peter Meel and Tim Grace from The National

Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) define

cloud computing as “Cloud computing is a model for

enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network

access to a shared pool of configurable 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.” (Mell and

Grace, 2011)

Cloud computing services are traditionally

divided as follows:

(a) Software as a Service (SaaS) – clients use

provided applications running on provider’s

infrastructure;

(b) Platform as a Service (PaaS) – clients deploy

and manage their own application on provider’s

infrastructure (hardware and software);

provider’s hardware infrastructure for their

computing needs but maintain control over all

software, storage, and networks; and

(d) Storage as a Service – (StaaS)—clients use

provider’s infrastructure to store files such as

documents, photos, archives. (Katzan, 2011)

Probably the first article investigating a link

between personality traits and (a behavioural

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1230-5982

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-9237

intention to) use of cloud services was Aharony

(2015). From the Big Five Inventory, the study

included only openness to experience, and it was

significantly correlated with a behavioural intention

to use cloud computing by information professionals.

Trust was found to significantly influence

behavioural intention to use cloud storage (Santoso et

al, 2018) (trust is a facet of agreeableness). But it is

necessary to stress that in this article, trust was

defined as "an individual's willingness to provide

their personal information at risk while in a state of

uncertainty", the concept taken from Miline and

Culnan (2004).

Alam et al (2018) considered several traits, none

of them from the Big Five Inventory. Some of the

investigated traits significantly influenced cloud

computing adoption among Malay-owned SMEs in

Malaysia.

It may be expected that it is more tech-savvy users

who use cloud storage. Previous research (Santoso et

al, 2018, Pavlicek et al 2017, Olexova et al 2017,

Sudzina, 2015) identified that men, less neurotic, and

more open to experience people perceive themselves

as more tech-savvy. Alohali et al. (2018), who

focused on use of technology from a security

perspective, found out the consciousness was

significantly correlated to 19 of 28 investigated

behaviours, openness to experience was significantly

correlated to 12, agreeableness was significantly

596

Pavlicek, A. and Sudzina, F.

Impact of Personality Traits (BFI-2-XS) on using Cloud Storage.

DOI: 10.5220/0007732205960599

In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2019), pages 596-599

ISBN: 978-989-758-372-8

correlated to 9, and neuroticism was significantly

correlated to 7, while extraversion was significantly

correlated only to one. With regards to demographic

factors, age was significantly correlated to 16 of 28

investigated behaviours and gender was significantly

correlated to 13. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect

that personality traits and demographics factors may

explain usage cloud storage.

Although recent research investigates many

aspects of cloud computing – from adoption by

organizations (Oliveira et al, 2014) to the various

issues such as trust, privacy, and confidentiality

(Khajeh-Hosseini, 2010) or understanding of

opportunities and risks associated with cloud services

(Dutta et al, 2013), there is still a need for

investigating cloud computing storage services at the

individual user level. Our paper fills the gap in the

literature.

The research question this paper investigates is

if/what five personality traits influence use of cloud

storage while controlling for demographic factors.

2 DATA AND METHODOLOGY

Data were collected in December 2017 – March 2018

using an on-line questionnaire. Respondents were 478

university students (272 men, 206 women; on average

20.5 years old) from the Czech Republic. They

differed also in experience from practice, 106 only

study, 176 have a temporary job (brigade), 164 have

a part-time job, 16 have a full time outside the field

of study, and 12 have a full time within the field of

study.

Personality traits were measured using John and

Soto's Big Five Inventory-2 (Soto, 2017b) translated

to Czech by Hřebíčková et al., 2018). Only BFI-2-XS

Soto (2017a), i.e. a 15-statement version was used for

this conference paper; these statements were "I am

someone who..."

... tends to be quiet,

... is compassionate, has a soft heart,

... tends to be disorganized,

... worries a lot,

... is fascinated by art, music, or literature,

... is dominant, acts as a leader,

... is sometimes rude to others,

... has difficulty getting started on tasks,

... tends to feel depressed, blue,

... has little interest in abstract ideas,

... is full of energy,

... assumes the best about people,

... is reliable, can always be counted on,

... is emotionally stable, not easily upset,

... is original, comes up with new ideas

on a 1-5 Likert scale where 1 meant strongly disagree

and 5 stood for strongly agree. Extraversion was

calculated as an average of the 1st (reversed-scored),

the 6th and the 11th answer, agreeableness as an

average of the 2nd, the 7th (reversed-scored) and the

12th answer, conscientiousness as an average of the

3rd (reversed-scored), the 8th (reversed-scored) and

the 13th answer, neuroticism as an average of the 4th,

the 9th and the 14th (reversed-scored) answer, and

openness to experience as an average of the 5th, the

10th (reversed-scored) and the 15th answer.

The dependent variable was measured using the

question "Do you use the following services? Cloud

storage (eg Google Drive, Dropbox)". Respondents

were to choose one of the following answers:

 No (coded as 0),

 Yes, sometimes (coded as 1),

 Yes, often (coded as 1).

The questionnaire contained additional questions

which were not used in the analysis presented in this

paper.

Logistic regression was used to analyse impact of

gender, age, job type and five personality traits

(extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,

neuroticism, openness to experience) on use versus

non-use of cloud storage. A multivariate approach

was used. SPSS software was used for the analysis.

Although binary logistic regression module exists in

SPSS, ordinal (logistic) regression module was used

for practical reasons - handling of factors, i.e. of

categorical variables (the binary logistic regression

module has only a field for covariates, i.e. continuous

variables).

3 RESULTS

The research question is if/what five personality traits

influence use of cloud storage. Control variables are

age, gender, and job type. Logistic regression

parameter estimates for the full model are provided in

Table 1.

The model per se is significant, p-value = .029,

Cox and Snell pseudo R

is .044, Nagelkerke pseudo

is .069, and McFadden pseudo R

is .044.

Considering all variables, openness to experience and

gender are significant at .05 level. Several submodels

were considered. Parameter estimates for ordinal

logistic regression with these two variables and age

are provided in Table 2.

The model per se is significant, p-value = .001,

Cox and Snell pseudo R

is .033, Nagelkerke pseudo

is .051, and McFadden pseudo R

is .033.

Impact of Personality Traits (BFI-2-XS) on using Cloud Storage

597

Considering all variables, openness to experience and

gender are significant at .05 level.

Table 1: Parameter estimates for the full model.

Esti-mate

Std.

Error

Wald

Sig.

Usage=0

.658

1.872

.124

.725

Age

.092

.059

2.460

.117

Extraversion

-.102

.146

.488

.485

Agreeableness

.115

.172

.446

.504

Consciousness

-.084

.176

.229

.632

Neuroticism

.030

.142

.046

.830

Openness to

experience

.338

.152

4.920

.027

Male

.535

.247

4.694

.030

Female

Part-time job

-.878

1.159

.573

.449

Only study

-1.379

1.152

1.433

.231

Temporary job

-1.371

1.147

1.429

.232

Full-time job

outside the field of

study

-.849

1.379

.379

.538

Full-time job

within the field of

study

This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

Table 2: Parameter estimates for ordinal logistic regression.

Esti-

mate

Std.

Error

Wald

Sig.

Usage=0

2.295

1.205

3.626

.057

Age

.108

.055

3.919

.048

Openness to

experience

.351

.147

5.656

.017

Male

.519

.232

5.012

.025

Female

This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

4 ANALYSIS

The results suggest that use of cloud services is quite

common between the young population – most

respondents confirmed being users of at least one

such service, quite often even more than one.

Our research has shown that there are factors that

affect cloud storage use. Statistically significant are

"openness to experience" and "gender". Conversely

“extraversion, agreeability, conscientiousness,

neuroticism” do not seem to play any role.

Such results are logically coherent as information

technology and cloud services are a relatively modern

thing, so primarily early adopters (people open to new

experiences) are the first users of these services.

Likewise, it is well known that modern digital

technology has a slightly higher usage amongst men.

There was no assumption that extraversion or

introversion should play a role, nor for neuroticism or

agreeableness there is reason to expect a correlation.

In the case of conscientiousness the connection to

cloud use the would be possible, but was not proven.

The relevance of the results in terms of the

benefits that the end user can get: the results of this

research are mostly theoretical. We are aware that our

findings are not that much surprising, but we are glad

that we were able to provide good statistical backing

to the generally shared assumption.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The aim of the paper was to investigate is whether

personality traits influence use of cloud services.

From the sample of Czech university students,

approximately four fifths used cloud storage. This

behaviour can be explained by their openness to

experience.

Agreeableness was not found to be significant,

though Santoso (2018) found trust to be significant,

and trust is a facet of agreeableness. In general, a

meta-analysis found that even constructs, which are

called the same, differ in how much they influence the

same dependent variable. And in this case, it could be

because Santoso (2018) focused on a very specific

aspect of trust.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The contribution is processed as an output of the

research project by the Internal Grant Agency of

University of Economics, Prague under the

registration number F4/27/2019.

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