The fast fashion industry is criticized for its unsustainable development. With the rise of the green economy and the awakening of consumers’ awareness of sustainable consumption, more and more companies realize the significance of green marketing in improving brand performance. However, it is undeniable that many fast fashion companies tend to take advantage of information asymmetry and cover up the unsustainable part of their business activities through fake green marketing campaigns to gain more potential consumers. There is a limited number of green marketing studies investigating consumers’ perception of greenwashing, while it is naturally important to explore the demand side responses to greenwashing in different industries. Therefore, this paper examines whether and how consumers’ perception of greenwashing in the fast fashion industry impacts their green purchase intention. The study explores the mediating role of perceived risk and the moderating role of consumers’ impulsive buying. In this paper, 433 valid questionnaires are collected from mainland China, and the Partial Least Square-Structural Equation (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypotheses. We draw the following conclusions: (1) consumers’ perception of greenwashing in the fast fashion industry has a direct negative effect on their green purchase intention; (2) greenwashing perception has an indirect negative effect through consumers’ risk perception, including financial perceived risk and green perceived risk; (3) consumers’ impulsive buying in the fast fashion industry reinforces the positive effect of greenwashing on their financial risk perceptions as a moderating variable. The conclusion of this paper has implications for the sustainable development of China and other emerging economies, which highlights the importance of pursuing information symmetry in green marketing to reduce consumers’ perceived risk and encourages companies to make substantial, sustainable development initiatives.

This study is to empirically investigate the impact of urbanization through improving transportation infrastructure, reflected by introducing high-speed rail (HSR), on the regional development with the interaction of the socioeconomic factors reflected by industrial structure. An advanced quantitative tool named multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method is applied. We find the impact of urbanization through HSR on regional development is mixed while interacting with industrial structure helps to explain heterogeneities of the impact. The more the industrial structure tends to be agricultural, the greater the negative impact of HSR opening on regional economic development; meanwhile, the more the industrial structure evolves to be service-oriented, the greater the positive impact of HSR. This study highlights the importance of the interaction between urban growth and socioeconomic factors, which would provides a reference for government and urban planners to make decisions on introducing HSR or improving transportation infrastructure.

The impact of digital platforms on the implementation of the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the business sustainability of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), under different containment policies during and after the COVID-19 pandemic has not yet been studied in detail. Using detailed administrative data from Alibaba Group’s online on-demand food delivery platform, we found that the digital platform contributed to the food security, wellbeing, employment and business sustainability of MSMEs both during and after the pandemic. We uncovered merchants’ heterogeneous responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during and after the implementation of different containment policies in China. On the extensive margin, the period of complete lockdown left long-term scarring on online merchants by decreasing the number of entrants, especially in the cooked food industry. In contrast, on the intensive margin, chain stores, especially those with large chain networks or multiapp stores, exhibited stronger resilience than their counterparts during and after lockdown. Thus, specialization (at the outlet level) and wider coverage (at the network level) emerged as key factors that enable business sustainability under challenging economic circumstances.

In the post-pandemic era, companies are facing challenges in their business development and may pay fewer attention to their sustainable development performance, whereas the investors are looking for better corporate sustainable development. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during 2010–2018, this paper empirically examines the relation between corporate sustainable development performance, investor sentiment, and managerial overconfidence with econometric tools such as panel data regression and S-GMM estimation. Three kinds of corporate sustainable development activities as measured by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) indexes, including consumer rights, employee benefits, and environmental protection, are proved to have a positive impact on investor sentiment. Compared to the SME and GEM Board, investor sentiment in the Main Board is less affected by corporate sustainable development. Furthermore, investor’s high sentiment leads to high managerial confidence in the SME and GEM Board, and managerial overconfidence is self-correcting over time. This paper illustrates why maintaining good corporate sustainable development performance is beneficial for listed companies from a new perspective.

In the post pandemic era, most of the countries are facing challenges in economic recovery, while investing in creative human capital such as teachers by increasing their salaries can be one of the policy options for governments to drive development. Housing price, however, may impact the working of these policies. Using the panel data of 31 provincial regions in China during 2006–2018, we evaluated the relationship between housing price, the improvement in teacher salary, and sustainable regional economic development. From the perspective of imbalanced regional development, we discovered the heterogeneity in the rate of return on education investment in terms of teacher salary. Higher teacher salary plays a more active role in the sustainable development of underdeveloped regions, and the crowding-out effect of housing price in Western China is the most intense. The results further provide some policy implications on efficiently promoting the coordinated development of sustainable regional economies by improving the creative human capital cultivators’ salaries. This paper verifies the significance of housing price dynamics from a new perspective based on educational investment. Overall, our study provides theoretical support for improving teachers’ income to promote regional economic development and further provides guidance for the government to carry out macro control to promote regional economic development with changes in housing price dynamics. Our study aims to link land systems, particularly the housing market, to sustainability and public policy.