Understanding the Factors Affecting the Adoption of Green Computing in the Gulf Universities

Many universities worldwide have adopted, or are intend to adopt green computing in their campuses to improve environmental sustainability and efficient-energy consumption. However, the factors affect the adoption of green computing are still not understood. The aim of this study is to investigate the key success factors affecting the adoption of green computing in developing countries’ universities, specifically in Gulf States universities. This study draws mainly on the TOE model suggested by Tornatzky and Fleischer [1] to understand the key areas for the success factors of green computing adoption. Data was collected based on survey research design to 118 Gulf universities. The findings revealed that the top five success factors affect the adoption of green computing in gulf universities are: awareness, relative advantage, top management support, adequate resources and government policy. Moreover, among the proposed three contexts the most important one is organizational, followed by environmental, and finally technology factors. This study contributes to the theory by providing taxonomy of the factors affecting the adoption of green computing. For practitioners, this study will assist the decision makers in gulf countries to benefit from the findings of this study to make well informed decisions by focusing on the key factor that have a greater impact on adopting green computing. Keywords—Success factors; green computing; TOE model and