Abstract:
The world has been witnessed with many
technological revolutions. One of them
is the computing technologies. The
world is able to do many things with the
utilization of this innovation. There have
been many revolutions such as
mainframe computers, super computers,
web technologies, Internet, grid
computing, utility computing, etc even
in the computing technologies
throughout the history of the world.
Cloud computing is another evolutions
in the field of computingwhere
computingis delivered as hosted services
over the Internet and it has been evolved
from the earlier computing technologies
by the integration of some of them and
removing the obstacles encountered in
them as a new technology to the world.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft,
Salesforce.com, are some of the
organizations who provide this
technology to organizations and
personal users. Google provides a service
called Google Docs, a widely used
example of cloud computing. Even
though many studies have examined the
overall concept of cloud computing, no
previous research has analyzed students'
usage and acceptance of Google Docs in
a university setting.
The purpose of this paper is to focuses
on the factors influencing the use of
Google docs as one of the SaaS offering
of cloud computing services. The Theory
of Planned Behavior was used as the
theoretical model for this research in
examining what factors influence
students to use Google Docs. The
interviews (n=20) and surveys (n=316)
were deployed to gain a better
understanding of this phenomenon. By
using hierarchical regression analysis
and a correlation matrix to analyze the
data, it was found that all three
constructs of the Theory of Planned
Behavior (Attitude, Subjective Norm,
and Perceived Behavioral Control) are
significantly and positively correlated
with intention to use Google Docs.
Further, it was found that Affect, which
measures a person's emotional
responses, is also a significant predictor
of Behavioral Intention. The findings of
this research could be used by multiple
stakeholder groups to better understand
the factors influencing the usage of
Google Docs.
