Based on the panel data of 115 resource-based prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper explores the mechanism of environmental regulation stimulating technological innovation and breaking the "resource curse" by integrating natural resource dependence, environmental regulation and technological innovation into the same analytical framework and establishing the endogenous growth model of four sectors. The results show that the relationship between environmental regulation and natural resource dependence and technological innovation has a significant nonlinear moderating effect, that is, environmental regulation can promote the technological innovation of resource-based cities as a forcing mechanism; Different types of resource-based cities have different threshold values of environmental regulations, which need to implement different intensity of environmental regulations. High-intensity environmental regulation can completely break the "resource curse" in the growing resource-based cities, but can weaken the "resource curse" in the mature and declining resource-based cities. Therefore, differentiated environmental regulation measures should be implemented for different types of resource-based cities, and the synergy of environmental regulation and other policies and measures should be brought into play to promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and gradually get rid of resource dependence.