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Green technology innovation is an important instrument to promote green development. It is a long-standing and typical fact in China that the behavior of local governments in setting economic growth targets similar to those of neighboring regions contradicts the unbalanced development between Chinese regions. Exploring the impact of this phenomenon on green technology innovation reveals, to some extent, whether the current economic growth target strategy is still applicable to China's green development. To answer this question, this study used light and economic growth target data to calculate the deviation of the target from the actual resource endowment and empirically analyzed its impact on green innovation with a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. The study found that the deviation from target and green technology innovation had an 'inverted U-shaped' relationship, i.e., a moderate increase in the economic growth target could motivate local governments to seek new skills (e.g., green technology) to fulfill their commitments. However, an excessive deviation from resource endowment could force governments to distort resource allocation in order to increase economic growth and inhibit green innovation. Heterogeneity analysis showed that: 1 Compared with utility model patents, green invention patents faced a greater crowding-out effect. 2 Companies in non-state, small, medium, and micro, as well as non-polluting industries were more vulnerable to green innovation. 3 The financial pressure, internal control level and innovation ability of enterprises, the innovation environment, the legal environment, and the green development level of regions all affected the relationship between goal deviation and green innovation. Accordingly, it is proposed that in order to boost green development, China needs to further optimize the economic growth target strategy, improve the institutional mechanism to promote green innovation, and improve the performance assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]