In the context of China’s rapidly evolving capital market, the proliferation of listed companies has been a salient phenomenon. The quality of corporate governance has emerged as a pivotal factor in determining the success or failure of these entities. Research by Balsmeier et al. (2022) indicates that the greater the independence of a listed company’s board of directors, the higher its innovation output (both in terms of quantity and quality of patents) ^[1]. This finding suggests a strong correlation between the performance of a company and the independence of its board. The present study has selected listed companies on the A-share market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2013 as the subjects of its research. A sample of 960 companies was initially obtained from the CSMAR database. Following a rigorous financial data screening, a final sample of 944 valid companies was retained for further analysis.