User behavior study for inducing to remove unnecessary data on cloud storage

Abstract

Cloud storage has changed computing paradigm as data is no longer stored locally on a hard-drive but stored remotely in the cloud. While cloud storage provides significant convenience and great flexibility, there is an environmental impact from cloud storage both in terms of physical waste and energy consumption from the data centers. In this work, we perform a user study on cloud storage and understand how creating awareness about the impact of cloud storage can impact users` behavior. We performed a randomized experiment with Dropbox cloud storage users. The users were divided into 5 different groups - informational, environmental, emotional, and default delete groups, in addition to the control group. Each group was shown different information to create awareness on the impact of cloud storage. We present our experimental design and show that through intervention and creating awareness, cloud storage saving behavior can be influenced in diverse ways.