An Empirical Investigation on the Impact of Trust Mediated Determinants and Moderating Factors on the Adoption of Cloud Computing

Abstract

In a prior study we found out that trust is an effective factor in the acceptance and adoption of cloud computing using the UTAUT. However, various relationships from the original UTAUT were not confirmed in the extended model for cloud computing. Therefore, we present here a study aimed at investigating the mediation effect of trust on users' attitude toward the adoption of cloud computing using UTAUT. It is also aimed to examine the role of five moderating factors which are gender, age, education, managerial level and job domain on subjects' behavioral intention to use cloud computing services. Data were collected from 219 subjects in order to test the modified model and were analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) algorithm. Experimental results demonstrated that Performance Expectancy and Facilitating Conditions are strongly mediated by trust for the behavioral intention to adopt cloud computing. Statistical results, on the other hand, indicated that the majority of the moderating factors did not have a significant impact on the acceptance of cloud computing. The paper finally concludes with the limitations of current study and directions for future work.