Abstract: Under the background of strengthening ecological civilization construction and expanding employment, can environmental regulation achieve multiple goals of environmental protection, green employment and high-quality development simultaneously? This has become a major issue that needs to be resolved urgently. A high-quality development evaluation index with convenient operation was constructed, and decomposed into structural effect, technical effect and regulatory effect. Under the unified framework, the human capital mechanism that environmental regulation affects high quality development was explored, and the simultaneous equation spatial autoregressive model and provincial panel data were used to test the theoretical hypothesis. Finally, the nonlinear effects of environmental regulation on high quality development under the adjustment of different types of human capital factors were explored. The research found that:(1)Environmental regulation can affect high quality development through human capital accumulation, industrial structure upgrading, and energy-saving and emission reduction technology innovation. (2) Environmental regulation, through dynamic matching with the human capital premium, can promote industrial structure upgrading and energy-saving and emission reduction technology innovation, thereby contributing to high-quality development. (3) Environmental regulation has a nonlinear effect on high quality development under the adjustment of human capital factors. Overall, the improvement of human capital factors is conducive to giving full play to the positive effects of environmental regulation on high quality development. Improving the quality of human capital is key to the current regulation of human capital factors and the release of high-quality development effects of environmental regulation. (4)There is a significant positive spatial spillover effect in China's high quality development. Local governments lack collaborative governance in environmental issues, which has weakened this space spillover effect. Therefore, there is a large room for improvement in the high-quality development at the global level. Thus, fully stimulating the accumulation of human capital in environmental regulation, shifting from focusing solely on the "quantity" expansion of human capital to "qualitative" improvement, and achieving regional coordinated governance are essential to effectively improving the high-quality development effects of environmental regulation.