American cyber-spying may already have had a negative economic impact on the US technology sector, according to a report published this week by the Cloud Security Alliance.

The trade group surveyed its members in the wake of revelations made in June by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden over the so-called “Prism” electronic surveillance programme. The affair has since implicated major technology firms such as Facebook, Google and Luxembourg-based Skype, which is owned by tech giant Microsoft.

The CSA surveyed 456 of its members, about half based in the US and half outside the country, including 138 in Europe.

Among non-US respondents, 56% said they were “less likely to use US-based cloud providers” and 10% said they had already “cancelled a project to use US-based cloud providers”.

Slightly more than a third of American residents (36%) agreed that the “Snowden incident” made it “more difficult for your company to conduct business outside the US”.

The survey also asked if companies who received government orders to hand over data should “be able to publish summary information about the amount of responses they have made?” Out of 438 worldwide responses, 91% said “yes” and 9% said “no”.

“What CSA members feel about this issue”

The report noted that the organisation “is not representing these survey results to be indicative of anything more than what CSA members feel about this issue.”

The poll was conducted online from June 25 to July 9 and released on Tuesday.

Five year-old CSA was founded to “promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.” It has more than 35 local chapters globally, including in France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK.

The CSA report did not identify which of its members took the survey. However, according to its website, corporate members include Adobe, Amazon, AT&T, Atos, Cisco, Deloitte, eBay, Ericsson, Ernst & Young, Google, HP, KPMG, Microsoft, Oracle, Orange, PGP, PwC, Siemens, Swisscom, Tata Consulting Services, Telecom Italia, Trend Micro and the US Department of Defense.

In addition, CSA’s LinkedIn group has more than 48,000 members.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article mis-spelled Edward Snowden’s name. Sorry.