Human–Artificial Intelligence Collaboration and Green Innovation of Chinese Enterprises: A Digital Perspective

The deep synergy between artificial intelligence and human capital facilitates enterprise green innovation transformation. Adopting the TOE framework, this paper constructs theoretical hypotheses and uses the panel data of Chinese listed firms to explore how human–artificial intelligence collaboration affects green innovation quantity and quality, along with its mediating paths and boundary conditions. Empirical results show that: (1) Human–artificial intelligence collaboration significantly promotes green innovation quantity and quality with quantile heterogeneity. High-innovation enterprises show stronger gains in green innovation quality, while cross-quantile differences are limited for green innovation quantity. (2) Organizational and employee digital capabilities act as mediators. However, the organizational digital capabilities path is not statistically significant for green innovation quantity, whereas other mediating paths are supported. (3) The promotional effect is shaped by digital infrastructure thresholds. Enterprise digital infrastructure produces a double-threshold increasing effect, and regional digital infrastructure creates a single threshold. Past this regional threshold, the effect on green innovation quantity turns from negative to positive. The regional threshold for green innovation quality is marginally significant, with its positive effect only present under low regional digital infrastructure and disappearing once the threshold is crossed. This paper identifies the digital constraints of human–artificial intelligence collaboration for green innovation and provides practical implications for enterprise digital and green development.