Users’ Payment Intention considering Privacy Protection in Cloud Storage: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach

To solve the current privacy leakage problems of cloud storage services, research on users’ payment intention for cloud storage services with privacy protection is extremely important for improving the sustainable development of cloud storage services. An evolutionary game model between cloud storage users and providers that considers privacy is constructed. Then, the model’s evolutionary stability strategies via solving the replication dynamic equations are analyzed. Finally, simulation experiments are carried out for verifying and demonstrating the influence of model parameters. The results show that the evolutionary stable strategies are mainly affected by the privacy protection profit growth coefficient of both parties, input costs, free-riding gains, and other factors. If the profit growth coefficient is very small, users will not choose to pay and providers will not choose to actively protect user information. As the profit growth coefficient increases, both parties will promote the development of privacy protection with a higher probability. The results are beneficial for cloud storage providers to increase the number of paid users and thus to achieve the sustainable development of cloud storage service.