It is definitely anecdotal. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I'll try to find some relevant data, though I'm not sure how easy that will be. Slightly more helpful are maybe looking up policies for most credit cards, which now let you return virtually any item within 90 days for any reason, extend warranties to a total of 2-4 years, cover accidental damage to items including breakage and theft for 90 days after purchase, and offer historical price matching for 60-90 days or sometimes even longer. These policies are extremely difficult to come by where I live (not in the US), and I've had a far more difficult time returning items that really should be returnable (dry pasta or something very shelf-stable) than I did in the States.

I did find this snippet, which at least indicates that Americans more often take advantage of return policies. However, I understand that this doesn't directly discuss the differences in policies:

"In the US, an estimated 8–10% of in-store sales is returned whereas online sales may result in 25–40% returns. [...] In Asia and Europe, less than 5 percent of purchases are returned." https://psmag.com/magazine/underwear-of-uncertain-origin

More anecdotes in that article, and countless other anecdotes are trivial to find online:

> U.S. retailers pride themselves on their generous return policies. At Costco, I can buy a barbecue grill, cook on it all summer, then return it in the fall for a full refund. (Which is not to say that I would.) Or take the proverbial television bought for Super Bowl Sunday, then returned. The days leading up to professional football’s championship game see a huge spike in TV sales. And just as reliably, the days after the game see a spike in TVs returned to the store.