Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism, while new quality productive forces serve as a powerful driver of high-quality development. Exploring the common prosperity effect of new quality productive forces has become a significant issue in advancing Chinese modernization. The panel data from 31 provincial-level regions (Due to the lack of data, the statistical data mentioned here do not include the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province) from 2008 to 2022 was utilized to empirically examine the impact of new quality productive forces on common prosperity and its underlying mechanisms. The findings reveal that new quality productive forces significantly promote common prosperity, with a stronger effect on the dimension of "commonality" than on "prosperity". Mechanism analysis indicates that new quality productive forces contribute to common prosperity through technological innovation effects, factor allocation effects, and industrial structure upgrading effects. Heterogeneity tests show that the promoting effect of new quality productive forces on common prosperity is stronger in the central region compared to the western and eastern regions, while in the northeastern region, new quality productive forces do not exhibit a positive impact. Threshold effect analysis reveals that the influence of new quality productive forces on common prosperity is subject to a threshold effect related to the marketization of data factors. The conclusions help clarify the mechanism through which new quality productive forces drive common prosperity and provide decision-making references for achieving common prosperity.