（2002）Investigating the Impact of Auditor-Provided Systems Reliability Assurance on Potential Service Recipients.pdfVIP

Journal of Information Systems Vol. 16 2002 Supplement pp. 69ñ87 Investigating the Impact of Auditor-Provided Systems Reliability Assurance on Potential Service Recipients J. Efrim Boritz University of Waterloo James E. Hunton Bentley College ABSTRACT: The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which auditor-provided systems reliability assurance affects potential service recipientsí (1) likelihood of recom- mending that their company enter into a contractual agreement with the service provider, and (2) comfort level with the reliability of the service providerís information systems. We conducted a full-factorial between-subjects experiment where the following four auditor assurances were either absent or present: availability, security, integrity, and maintainability. A total of 481 middle- and upper-level managers from a broad spectrum of functional areas participated in the study. Research findings indicate significant main effects with respect to all four assurances, as well as firm size, for the ìlikelihoodî variable. Significant main ef fects were also obtained for the ìcomfortî variable with respect to availability, security, and main- tainability (marginal significance), but integrity and firm size were nonsignificant. The amount of variance explained by the ìavailabilityî and ìsecurityî assurances (combined) was remark- ably large (56 percent for ìlikelihoodî and 43 percent for ìcomfortî) relative to the combined variance explained by the other two assurances (1 percent for ìlikelihoodî and 1 percent for ìcomfortî). We also found evidence that respondents overweighed assurance reports on individua