Can reverse mixed reform promote green innovation in Chinese private enterprises?

• Impact of reverse mixed reform on green innovation in China's manufacturing. • Reverse mixed reform boosts quantity and quality of private firms' green innovation. • Mechanism one is to enhance willingness of executives to engage in green innovation. • Mechanism two is to increase enterprise financial resource. • Multi-period difference-in-differences model effectively mitigates endogeneity. Based on the background of mixed-ownership reform in China, this article deeply studies the influence of reverse mixed reform on green innovation in Chinese private companies. "Reverse mixed reform" refers to a situation where state-owned capital invests in private companies. The present article takes Chinese A-share manufacturing private listed companies as the research object and uses a multi-period difference-in-differences method for testing. The results show that (1) reverse mixed reform not only increases the quantity of green innovation in private enterprises, but also enhances the quality of their green innovation; (2) the promoting effect is mainly achieved through mechanisms such as enhancing private enterprise executives' willingness to engage in green innovation and increasing enterprise resources; (3) the promoting effect is more significant in samples with higher environmental regulation intensity and less industry competition.