  We study the effect of surface brightness on the mass-metallicity relation
using nearby galaxies whose gas content and metallicity profiles are available.
Previous studies using fiber spectra indicated that lower surface brightness
galaxies have systematically lower metallicity for their stellar mass, but the
results were uncertain because of aperture effect. With stellar masses and
surface brightnesses measured at WISE W1 and W2 bands, we re-investigate the
surface brightness dependence with spatially-resolved metallicity profiles and
find the similar result. We further demonstrate that the systematical
difference cannot be explained by the gas content of galaxies. For two galaxies
with similar stellar and gas masses, the one with lower surface brightness
tends to have lower metallicity. Using chemical evolution models, we
investigate the inflow and outflow properties of galaxies of different masses
and surface brightnesses. We find that, on average, high mass galaxies have
lower inflow and outflow rates relative to star formation rate. On the other
hand, lower surface brightness galaxies experience stronger inflow than higher
surface brightness galaxies of similar mass. The surface brightness effect is
more significant for low mass galaxies. We discuss implications on the
different inflow properties between low and high surface brightness galaxies,
including star formation efficiency, environment and mass assembly history.
