With the intensifying trend of population aging, the positive effects of Urban Green Space (UGS) on Psychological Well-being (PW) among older adults have garnered increasing attention. Previous studies examined the unidirectional pathways through which objective UGS exposure indicators influenced PW via Sense of Place (SOP) or Perceived Restorativeness (PR). However, little empirical work has addressed how UGS exposure affects PW in older adults through a dual mediation pathway encompassing both SOP and PR. To address this gap, this study investigated representative urban parks in Fuzhou, China. Using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) as objective exposure indicators, along with survey data capturing older adults’ perceived characteristics (PC) of UGS, SOP, and PR, we developed a multilevel structural equation model to explore how NDVI, NDWI, and PC influence PW through the dual mediators of SOP and PR. Results indicated that (1) NDVI and PC influence PW either directly or indirectly via the mediators SOP and PR, with PC exhibiting a significantly stronger effect than NDVI; (2) NDWI has no significant effect on SOP and PW, but it indirectly influences PW through PR; (3) PR moderated the link between SOP and PW; (4) under the dual-pathway mechanism, PR contributes more substantially to PW than SOP. This study enriches the understanding of how UGS contributes to PW and advocates for integrating exposure characteristics, place qualities, and restorative elements into the framework of age-friendly city planning to guide targeted health interventions for the elderly. Moreover, SOP–PR insights from an East Asian city inform global aging urbanism.

Environmental ratings combine corporate policies and performance, but their interpretation depends on the criterion, horizon and reporting boundary. We apply a four-layer validity framework to a retrospectively reconstructed 2014–2025 panel of 209 Chinese and 115 Korean listed firms selected based on data coverage. Fixed-effects models estimate within-firm associations. In the common 2019–2023 exposure window, none of the 12 country-specific or between-country associations with next-year emissions intensity survives Benjamini–Hochberg adjustment (minimum q = 0.920). Two- and three-year associations emerge in the extended history; their statistical classification depends on temporal support and the finite sample covariance correction. Ratings converge with selected Chinese climate action and disclosure assessments. Korean measurement agreement is strongly boundary-dependent: excluding four firms with documentary-supported scope mismatches raises log-scale concordance between provider and regulatory emissions from 0.734 to 0.989 across 142 remaining pairs from 18 firms. Recent reports directly document particular years rather than every historical boundary. This study contributes a validation protocol linking each claim to its criterion, temporal support, organizational scope and precision. These results guide the joint use of ratings and emissions evidence without attributing causal effects or establishing equivalence to zero.