Switching from hotels to peer-to-peer accommodation: an empirical study

Peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation has become increasingly popular in recent years, and hotels are facing unprecedented impacts. Attracting new consumers and retaining existing ones are critical to the success of P2P accommodation and hotels. The purpose of this paper is to examine three categories of antecedents for hotels consumers’ switching intention: push (i.e. satiation), pull (i.e. perceived value) and mooring (i.e. optimal stimulation level) factors using push–pull–mooring (PPM) model.

Airbnb was chosen as the research context. An online survey was conducted to examine the proposed research model and hypotheses. A total of 292 valid data were collected from Airbnb users through a survey.

The findings show that the three categories of factors have positive and significant effects on switching intention. Additionally, the mooring factor has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between pull factors and switching intention. Furthermore, the mooring factor affects both pull and push factors.

First, this is one of the early studies to pay attention to switching intention from hotels to P2P accommodation. Second, to provide a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ switching intention, the authors use PPM model to establish the research framework. This research improves the understanding of consumer’s switching intention by identifying the push and pull factors based on the differences between hotels and P2P accommodation in accordance with optimal stimulation level theory and consumer value theory.