In recent years, China has attached great importance to the construction of rural public culture, however, the user loss of rural public digital cultural services (RPDCS) is serious. To reveal users' perception of RPDCS, we employed a mixed‐method to investigate users' perception of RPDCS and explore the relationship between users' perception of RPDCS and user churn of RPDCS. The preliminary findings show that most users believed that RPDCS were not highly related to themselves, and RPDCS had few values but cannot bear to give up. Furthermore, we find that increasing use‐perceived involvement and usefulness will alleviate users' churn of RPDCS.

PurposeThe user churn (UC) of rural public digital cultural services (RPDCS) indicates that rural users no longer use RPDCS or have switched to other services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing RPDCS's UC and to contribute toward bridging the rural digital divide.Design/methodology/approachBased on the stimulus-organism-response theory, this study proposes a theoretical framework to investigate the factors influencing RPDCS's user churn. A total of 120 RPDCS users were initially recruited and 90 representative participants were chosen. Data were collected from the 90 respondents and 20 follow-up interviews. To examine the proposed framework and validate the correlations between these factors and UC, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis were used. In addition, recommendations are made to avoid the UC of RPDCS to bridge the rural digital divide.FindingsThe results indicate that the UC of RPDCS was stimulated by both physical and ability divides and RPDCS ineffectiveness, resulting in increased churn rates and an exacerbated digital divide. Thus, avoiding the UC of RPDCS is an important way to bridge the rural digital divide, which includes both the physical and ability divides.Originality/valueThis study adds new knowledge about RPDCS and distinguishes it from previous research on public digital cultural services. In addition, the authors discuss how to avoid the UC of RPDCS, to bridge the rural digital divide.

PurposeThis study aims to explore the relationship between elderly users' trust in public digital cultural services (PDCS) and their intention to use PDCS, and reveal the factors affecting their intentions from the perspective of trust to make recommendations that will increase their intention to use PDCS.Design/methodology/approachCombined with the trust building model and social exchange theory, this study constructed a conceptual model of elderly users' intention to use PDCS. Data collected from Chinese elderly users who have reached the age of 60 through questionnaire surveys were tested using the structural equation model with partial least squares. Finally, the authors proposed a model of elderly users' intention to use PDCS.FindingsThis study finds that elderly users' trust positively affects their intention to use PDCS from two aspects: service features and user features of PDCS. Concerning the service features, system quality directly affects elderly users' trust in PDCS most significantly, followed by information quality and service reputation. Concerning the user features, perceived value has a higher impact on elderly users' trust than that of service features, and information literacy and information quality directly affect perceived value.Originality/valueThis study adds new knowledge to the users' behavior of PDCS and enriches the prior description of PDCS. The recommendations made in this study provide a series of strategies for practitioners and researchers to improve the elderly users' intention to use PDCS and bridge the silver digital divide, which offers new ideas for improving the efficiency of PDCS.