Green innovation is a key component of sustainable development amid the fast transition to a low-carbon world. As the most populous country in the world, China displays apparent disparity of green innovation across regions. The extant literature mainly conducted a single factor research on the impact of green innovation and come to conflicting results. Therefore, this study aims to systematically investigate the antecedent multi-factor mechanisms contributing to high green innovation performance.We make the initial attempt to employ a clear-set qualitative comparative analysis(QCA) method to conduct a multi-factor configuration analysis with a sample of 30 provinces and autonomous regions in China. Different from the traditional quantitative regression analysis, this study analyzes 7 conditions jointly to explore the underlying configurations mechanism of green innovation. The results reveal 3 driving configurations for high green innovation performance: resource-driven, policy-dependent and environment-friendly. And the results further suggest that: First, innovation resources ensure the development of green innovation ,and high green innovation performance depends on the richness of innovation resources; Second, environmental regulation serves as a key condition to improve green innovation in the regions with high investment in green innovation and strong government support, and the policy support and effective government guidance are the guarantees for green innovation; Third, the quantity of inter-provincial R&D technology spillovers or foreign investment is the driving force for green innovation in the regions with strong social responsibility. This study takes into consideration of multi-factors that may affect green innovation to address the potential causal relationships, which overcomes the inconsistency in previous single-factor research. The findings shed light on the feasible paths for managers to improve firms’ high green innovation performance in practice.