This study investigates the effects of unverifiable green signals—vague environmental claims, trust-substitute cues, and function-stacking—on consumer purchasing behaviors in e-commerce settings. Using detailed product-level data collected from two major Chinese online platforms, Taobao and Pinduoduo, during the peak shopping period in November 2023, we analyze the impact of these signals on product sales using ordinary least squares (OLS), instrumental variable (IV), and propensity score matching (PSM) methods. Results indicate that vague environmental language and function-stacking significantly boost sales across platforms, highlighting consumers’ preference for easily interpretable and seemingly comprehensive products. However, trust-substitute signals exhibit mixed effects, with them being beneficial on platforms with stronger credibility frameworks (Taobao) and less effective or even detrimental on platforms characterized by price competition and weaker governance (Pinduoduo). This study contributes to the literature on consumer trust and digital greenwashing by identifying platform-specific responses to unverifiable eco-claims and underscoring the importance of heuristic processing theories and trust formation mechanisms in digital marketing contexts. These findings underscore the complex dynamics of greenwashing strategies and stress the necessity for enhanced regulation and clearer communication standards to protect consumers and genuinely support sustainable consumption.

Cycling is a sustainable but vulnerable mode of transportation. Intersections’ bicycle-vehicle crashes are particularly dangerous. This paper explores the discordance between empirical evidence and cyclists’ perceptions of the various risk factors of cycling. Ridge regression was adopted to identify risk factors from bicycle-vehicle conflict data. A questionnaire was distributed to assess cyclists’ perceptions of safety and danger over the same candidate risk factors. There was indeed discordance between the data and the questionnaire results. Cyclists appear to misestimate risk in certain factors such as bus stops and subway stations. Understanding these misestimations can provide a foundation for safety improvements and for promoting cycling as a sustainable mode of transportation.

In recent years, bike sharing has increasingly spread across the world. Compared with personal bikes, shared bikes are uniform and have bright surfaces to help the public to find them easily. At the same time, unfamiliarity is still a problem for some users of shared bikes. Therefore, these features should be understood to improve the night visibility of cyclists and improve traffic safety. Our study tested and compared differences in night visibility using five types of visibility aids. The results showed two cognitive differences between cyclists and drivers. First, cyclists believed that using flashing lights or static lights would provide better visibility than other visibility aids. However, using a static light and reflectors showed better results in our research. Secondly, compared to private bikes, cyclists showed more confidence in the nighttime visibility of shared bikes, especially with retroreflective strips. But the behavior of drivers in our study did not support such differences. A post-experiment survey was conducted to explore such cognitive differences, and showed that unfamiliarity with these strips was a possible reason for driver unawareness. This study will aid policy makers in incorporating suitable visibility aids within bike-sharing programs. Further, this study includes helpful advice for cyclists in terms of improving their night visibility.