Inproceedings3638
You Can’t Fight What You Can’t Grasp: A Multilevel Conceptualization of Consumer Uncertainty in Cloud Service Contexts
You Can’t Fight What You Can’t Grasp: A Multilevel Conceptualization of Consumer Uncertainty in Cloud Service Contexts
Published: 2017
Dezember
Buchtitel: Proceedings of the Pre-ICIS JAIS Theory Development Workshop
Verlag: AIS
Organisation: Association for Information Systems (AIS)
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Kurzfassung
Cloud services are abstract, complex and lack personal contact. Accordingly, consumers face a multitude of uncertainties that make them hesitant to adopt such services. It is very challenging but in the provider’s best interest to mitigate consumers’ uncertainty. Providers must identify the most effective signals to provide consumers with convincing information. Such signals can originate from different sources including the provider itself, other transaction partners, or independent third parties. While the effectiveness of single information sources on uncertainty mitigation in general has been assessed, no study to date has investigated the varying effectiveness of different information sources on uncertainties or the reinforcing or weakening effect of combining different information sources at the same time. An investigation of such mitigation mechanisms requires a systematic conceptualization of cloud uncertainties that we lack today. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by developing and validating a multilevel conceptualization of consumer uncertainty in cloud service contexts first. In particular, we show how seven tangible uncertainty elements influence individuals’ intention to use cloud services and embed them into the established research on uncertainty. We then outline how we plan to exploit this multilevel conceptualization to investigate the erratic effectiveness of different information sources in mitigating selected types of uncertainty.
Critical Information Infrastructures