Antecedents of users’ switching intention to Central Bank Digital Currency: A push-pull-mooring model perspective

Since 2020, the People’s Bank of China has promoted the pilot work on e-CNY payment, but it has not been widely used and popularized. The public still prefers third-party payment as the main payment method. In the incumbent literature, most studies on e-CNY payment focus on the macro perspective and less on users. Based on grounded theory and the push–pull-mooring framework, we investigate users’ intention to switch from third-party payment to e-CNY payment, and identify fee cost, system function overload, convenience, trust, inertia, and external influence as core factors. The theoretical model and research hypotheses are validated using structural equation modeling approach. Results show that system function overload, convenience, trust, and external influence significantly facilitate switching intention, whereas inertia negatively impedes switching intention. The findings of this study enrich the literature on e-CNY and serve as a reference for the promotion of central bank digital currencies around the world.