China’s industry associations have been outside the “national innovation system” for a long time. Their contribution to technological innovation has been underestimated. From the perspective of the corporate social capital structure dimension，this study uses the research data of the manufacturing enterprises in the Pearl River Delta and adopts a negative binomial regression model to analyze the effect of industry association patent innovation as well as its mechanism. The following conclusions can be drawn. Firstly，industry associations have a significant positive impact on patent innovation performance. Secondly，different types of corporate social capital have different mediating effects. Technological social capital is the largest one which followed by financing social capital，policy social capital，and talented people’s social capital are the minimum. Thirdly，to compare with traditional industries，strategic emerging industries can more significantly increase patent innovation performance. However，the type of industry does not play a significant role in regulating the patent innovation effect of industry associations and other intermediary variables.