PurposeThe purpose of this study is to understand the psychological mechanism that affects consumer trust by focusing on the formation and influence process of psychological contracts, and taking this opportunity, explore the influence paths of food quality, food safety and service quality on consumer trust in the online food market, and provide theoretical suggestions for building trust in food businesses' consumers.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on an empirical investigation and uses partial least square structural equation modeling for analysis. Survey data were collected online from 359 APP users of online food transaction platforms in China.FindingsFood quality, food safety and service quality influence consumer trust through the mediating effects of relational and transactional psychological contracts. However, the differences between these influencing paths are obvious and shift with changes in the marketing channels.Practical implicationsThis study contributes to the body of consumer trust research by exploring online food transactions as an emerging trend in China. Some optimization strategies for food quality, food safety and service quality are provided for enterprises involved in online food transactions.Originality/valueThis is a pioneering study revealing psychological contracts as a missing but significant mediator between consumer trust and its antecedents.

Purpose Although social networking services (SNSs) have attracted billions of people to maintain and extend their social relationships online, more and more passive usage behaviors have been found during the daily SNS usage. The aim of this paper is to investigate how SNS users’ continuance intention is affected by passive SNS use, subjective well-being, as well as perceived concern regarding privacy and impression management. Methods A research model was developed according to the proposed hypotheses, and then partial least square (PLS) SEM was adopted to empirically assess the valid data collected from 389 WeChat users. Results The findings show that passive SNS use cannot significantly undermine continuance intention, but it has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between subjective well-being and continuance intention. Besides, the results of empirical research also reveal the antecedents of passive SNS use and subjective well-being from the perspectives of privacy concern and impression management concern, and thereby present the mechanism underlying users’ continuance intention. Conclusion This study enriches the SNS literature by indicating the moderating role of passive SNS use in the process of SNS usage, which facilitates the understanding regarding how users’ continuance intention can be influenced when they use SNSs passively. This study can help SNS providers to better understand the factors affecting users’ continuance intention in the case of passive SNS use, and then formulating effective strategies for retaining users and avoiding passive usage behaviors.