Understanding users' willingness to put their personal information on the personal cloud-based storage applications: An empirical study

Abstract

Despite prevalent privacy and security threats on the cloud, users have put tremendous amounts of their personal information on cloud storage. This present study proposes a comprehensive research framework to investigate cloud storage users' willingness to put personal information on personal cloud-based storage applications. Our research framework is theoretically derived from the Communication Privacy Management Theory and Privacy-Trust-Behavioral Intention Model. To empirically test our research framework, we conducted an online survey of 786 active cloud storage users both in Indonesia and Taiwan. The findings suggest that cloud storage users' willingness to put personal information is highly influenced by trust, perceived costs, perceived benefits, and also the degree of sensitivity of the personal information. Some findings with regard to cultural differences between the two countries are also showed out. The key findings, implications, and limitations are discussed in this paper.