Abstract Cloud service certifications (CSCs) are assessed by practitioners to support strategic cloud adoption decisions with the aim to reduce information asymmetries. Both businesses and consumers scrutinize CSCs’ assurances as ex ante signals indicating a cloud provider’s future service quality. While some research has examined the aggregate effects of certifications on decision variables, recipients’ evaluations of certifications and their assurances before making IT-related decisions have received little attention. Furthermore, prior research has predominantly focused on privacy and security assurances in e-commerce certifications. Drawing on signaling theory, we propose that certifications are signals that recipients decompose into a set of fine-grained assurance signals that they weigh to evaluate certifications. We evaluate the responses of 113 company representatives and 317 consumers to a best-worst scaling survey to examine the relative importance these two groups attach to ten assurances from CSCs. Our results show that similar to other online contexts, security and privacy are important assurances, but additional assurances related to availability, the customer friendliness of contracts, and legal compliance are also demanded, particularly by companies. Privacy, security, and availability are most crucial to both companies and consumers, but their relative importance varies substantially between the two groups. Post-hoc subgroup analyses reveal significant differences in assurances’ relative importance for provider and user companies, adopter and non-adopter consumers as well as companies using different types of services and from different industries. Our findings indicate that recipients evaluate certifications as a bundle of signals with varying importance due to recipients’ characteristics and context. With this conceptualization, we contribute to an advanced understanding of the sense-making of certifications and lay out how it influences cloud service adoption theories. Our study has practical implications for certification authorities that design CSCs as well as for providing insights to cloud service providers on customers who draw on CSC assurances when making cloud service adoption decisions.

中文翻译：

---

通过云服务认证的战略信号：比较认证保证对公司和消费者的相对重要性

从业人员对抽象云服务认证（CSC）进行评估，以支持战略性云采用决策，目的是减少信息不对称。企业和消费者都在仔细检查CSC的保证，作为事前信号，表明云提供商的未来服务质量。尽管一些研究检查了认证对决策变量的总体影响，但是在做出与IT相关的决策之前，接收者对认证及其保证的评估很少受到关注。此外，先前的研究主要集中在电子商务认证中的隐私和安全性保证上。根据信号理论，我们建议认证是接收者分解为一组细化的保证信号的信号，它们可以权衡评估认证。我们评估了113家公司代表和317名消费者对最差规模调查的回答，以检验这两组对CSC的十项保证的相对重要性。我们的结果表明，与其他在线上下文类似，安全性和隐私性是重要的保证，但尤其是公司也需要与可用性，合同的客户友好性和法律合规性相关的其他保证。隐私，安全性和可用性对于公司和消费者而言都是至关重要的，但是在这两个群体之间，它们的相对重要性差异很大。事后分组分析显示，对于提供商和用户公司而言，保证的相对重要性存在显着差异，采纳者和非采用者以及使用不同类型服务和来自不同行业的公司。我们的发现表明，由于接收者的特征和环境，接收者将证书视为一捆信号，其重要性各不相同。通过这种概念化，我们有助于对认证意义的高级理解，并阐明其如何影响云服务采用理论。我们的研究对设计CSC的证书颁发机构以及为在制定云服务采用决策时利用CSC保证的客户提供云服务提供商见解具有实际意义。通过这种概念化，我们有助于对认证意义的高级理解，并阐明其如何影响云服务采用理论。我们的研究对设计CSC的证书颁发机构以及为在制定云服务采用决策时利用CSC保证的客户提供云服务提供商见解具有实际意义。通过这种概念化，我们有助于对认证意义的高级理解，并阐明其如何影响云服务采用理论。我们的研究对设计CSC的证书颁发机构以及为在制定云服务采用决策时利用CSC保证的客户提供云服务提供商见解具有实际意义。