As a cornerstone for the healthy development of the capital market, the significance of high-quality information disclosure has become a consensus. However, in recent years, the transparency of supply chain information of listed companies in China has shown a downward trend, and the economic impact resul-ting from this phenomenon deserves attention. Under the policy context of strengthening the quality of infor-mation disclosure and supporting the protection of business secrets simultaneously, this study explores the impact of supply chain information concealment on corporate innovation based on the theory of proprietary costs.

The results show that supply chain information concealment has a significant positive impact on the substantive innovation, but has no significant impact on strategic innovation. The mechanism analysis reveals that supply chain information concealment promotes substantive innovation by strengthening the protection of technical information, enhancing market bargaining power, and reducing negative reputation risks. The heterogeneity analysis finds that the promoting effect of supply chain information concealment on the substantive innovation is more significant in samples with lower debt financing costs, stronger external supervision, a higher proportion of executives with technical backgrounds, smaller transaction shares, lower R&D information disclosure levels, and weaker intellectual property judicial protection. Further analysis reveals that the promoting effect of supplier information concealment on key core technological innovation is more obvious, while customer information concealment has a more significant impact on non-core technological innovation.

The contributions are as follows: First, it shows that supply chain information concealment is beneficial to substantive innovation, providing a new perspective for understanding the economic consequences of supply chain information concealment. Second, it reveals that supply chain information disclosure can also signifi-cantly affect corporate innovation, in addition to financial information and R&D information, supplementing the research content of information disclosure and corporate innovation. Third, it suggests that listed compa-nies need to make a trade-off between the benefits and the proprietary costs of information disclosure, provi-ding theoretical explanations and empirical evidence for government to implement differentiated regulatory standards of supply chain information disclosure.