Second-hand trading platforms are helpful to the recycling of resources. It is important to accelerate the construction of second-hand trading platforms and improve people’s willingness to buy second-hand goods. However, due to the uncertainty of second-hand goods, it is difficult to establish the trust between users and complete second-hand transactions. Nowadays, more and more platforms use community-based governance mechanisms to promote relationships between users. Taking the second-hand trading platform Xianyu as an example, this study explores the influence of three specific community-based mechanisms (interest group, feedback mechanism and dispute resolution mechanism) on trust and transaction intention from three dimensions of relational governance. This study compares the different effect between consumers and prosumers. Based on 721 valid questionnaires, a structural equation model was used to analyze the data. The results show that interest group, feedback mechanism and dispute resolution mechanism all have significant positive effects on trust in sellers and platforms. In addition, the impact of a dispute resolution mechanism on trust in sellers and platforms is higher for prosumers than for consumers. This study extends the previous research on community-based governance, contributes to the design of second-hand trading platforms and promotes more users to participate in recycling economy.

This research explores how the partitioned pricing strategy of premium subscriptions affects user willingness to purchase with two studies. Study 1 finds that all-inclusive pricing is more effective than traditional partitioned pricing (i.e., partitioned pricing in Single) and the two new formats of partitioned pricing (i.e., partitioned pricing in Combination and partitioned pricing in Blind Box) in terms of increasing user willingness to purchase due to the induced higher perceived value and perceived price fairness. Study 2 further finds that partitioned pricing in Combination or partitioned pricing in Blind Box (vs. partitioned pricing in Single) can affect perceived value positively via perceived playfulness and negatively via user-perceived price complexity simultaneously. These indirect effects hold across hedonic and utilitarian digital content products. These findings contribute to the literature on the pricing strategies of subscription-based digital content platforms. This research also provides suggestions for digital content platforms to adopt that will help them design their partitioned pricing strategies effectively.

While data-driven digital technologies (e.g., mobile applications) have brought convenience to users, they have also raised data privacy concerns. Regulators have taken various actions that ensure user data privacy to balance the protection and exploitation of personal data. However, the effect of privacy regulatory protection in preparing mobile users for data sharing remains unclear. This research develops and empirically tests an integrative model of how mobile users adjust their intention to share personal data in response to privacy regulatory protection. The results indicate that privacy regulatory protection can increase users’ intention to share personal data through enhancing psychological ownership of data (i.e., entitlement effect) and decreasing privacy concerns (i.e., reassurance effect). Moreover, the entitlement effect can be attenuated as app control over data increases, while the reassurance effect can be accentuated as users’ privacy efficacy increases. This research provides new insights into the role of privacy regulatory protection in promoting user data sharing by highlighting the psychological mechanisms underlying users’ responses to such regulations. It provides implications for digital platforms seeking to balance the challenges of user data protection with the benefits of data-driven marketing.