How Customer Participation Drives Continuance Intention in Fresh Food E-Commerce: The Mediating Role of Perceived Service Quality and the Moderating Role of Technology Anxiety

Abstract

This article develops and tests a mechanism-based model of continuance intention in fresh food e-commerce. The model positions customer participation as a multidimensional antecedent, perceived service quality as the mediating mechanism, and technology anxiety as a moderating boundary condition. The study is situated in Guangdong Province, China, where fresh food e-commerce is highly competitive, logistics intensive, and closely linked to repeated household purchasing. Drawing on a process-oriented perspective, the analysis distinguishes four dimensions of customer participation: task cognition, information seeking, effort expenditure, and human-computer interaction. These dimensions are hypothesised to influence continuance intention directly and indirectly through perceived service quality. Technology anxiety is further expected to weaken the positive relationship between participation and perceived service quality, particularly in those pathways that depend on digital information processing. A structured questionnaire was administered to fresh food e-commerce users, and 550 valid responses were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling. The measurement model demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity. Structural results show that all four participation dimensions positively influence perceived service quality. Effort expenditure exerts the strongest effect, followed by information seeking and human-computer interaction. Perceived service quality, in turn, positively influences continuance intention, indicating a meaningful mediating role. The direct effects of customer participation on continuance intention remain significant, which suggests partial rather than full mediation. Technology anxiety has a significant direct negative effect on perceived service quality and significantly weakens only the information-seeking pathway. Its moderating effects on task cognition, effort expenditure, and human-computer interaction are not statistically significant. The findings indicate that customer participation in fresh food e-commerce is both valuable and internally differentiated. The results also show that digital psychological constraints do not undermine all participation forms equally. The article extends current work on digital retail continuance by showing that users remain with fresh food e-commerce platforms not simply because the service is convenient, but because their own participation is successfully converted into favourable evaluations of service quality. For practice, the results suggest that platforms should prioritise interface clarity, information transparency, fulfilment reliability, and low-friction support for technology-anxious users rather than merely increasing participation volume.