Whether green technology innovation can effectively raise the level of population well-being per unit of ecological pressure is a critical issue in high-quality development. Based on a panel dataset covering 31 provincial-level administrative divisions in China from 2013 to 2023, the empirical analysis employs a two-way fixed effects model and panel quantile regression. The explained variable is the ratio of a population well-being index to the ecological pressure index. The population well-being index covers four dimensions, including income, educational attainment, health security, and environmental amenities, while the ecological pressure index integrates resource consumption and pollution indicators. The core explanatory variable is the logarithm of granted green patents, lagged by one year to capture the time required for innovations to generate tangible well-being outcomes.

This study has three findings. First, green technology innovation significantly improves the ecological welfare performance. This conclusion remains robust after variable substitution, alternative estimation methods, and a 2SLS instrumental variable approach that addresses endogeneity concerns. Second, the effect shows pronounced regional heterogeneity. In the eastern region, where the innovation ecosystem is relatively mature, significant positive effects appear across all quantiles. In the central region, where the economy has historically relied on heavy and chemical industries, the effect is significantly negative at medium-to-high quantiles, reflecting carbon lock-in and structural inertia in the low-carbon transition. In the western region, where technological absorptive capacity remains limited, no statistically significant effect is detected. Third, both industrial pollution control investment intensity and fiscal environmental expenditure intensity positively moderate the conversion of green technology innovation into ecological welfare performance. Their moderating mechanisms differ: the former directly creates large-scale application demand for green technology equipment and services through investment projects; the latter improves the regional ecological background and shares the social costs of transition, creating basic conditions for technology diffusion through a longer public service chain. The two together form functional complementarity from the demand side and the public goods provision side, respectively.

This study extends the evaluation of green technology innovation from the production sphere to the well-being sphere, constructing an integrated framework linking technology, governance investment, and population well-being. By adopting a ratio-based measure of ecological welfare performance, it explicitly quantifies the efficiency with which ecological inputs are converted into multi-dimensional well-being outputs. The analysis further distinguishes between technology innovation (the creation and patenting of new knowledge) and technology application (commercialization and diffusion), identifying environmental governance investment as a critical boundary condition moderating the latter stage.

The findings imply that the well-being effect of green technology innovation hinges on the alignment between regional development stages and governance investment structures. Realizing this well-being effect calls for the following differentiated policies: Promoting technology diffusion and commercialization in the innovation-mature east region, establishing transition funds and technology exchange platforms in the central region to offset restructuring costs, and strengthening technological absorptive capacity in the west region. At the national level, reinforcing both pollution control investment and fiscal environmental expenditure can amplify the moderating effects that channel green technology innovation into tangible population well-being improvements under tightening ecological constraints.