Drawing on social exchange theory and social information processing theory, this study constructs a moderated chain mediation model to test the impact of leader affiliative humor on employees' bootleg innovation. Based on a sample of 264 employees from Chinese companies, this study used SPSS 26.0 and MPLUS 8.3 to examine the hypotheses. Empirical results demonstrate that (a) leader affiliative humor is directly and positively related to employees' bootleg innovation; (b) supervisor-subordinate affective guanxi and psychological safety serve as mediators between leader affiliative humor and employees' bootleg innovation; (c) supervisor-subordinate affective guanxi and psychological safety function as chained mediators between leader affiliative humor and employees' bootleg innovation; and (d) personal need for structure negatively moderates the effect of leader affiliative humor on supervisor-subordinate affective guanxi and psychological safety, and negatively moderates the mediating effect of supervisor-subordinate affective guanxi on the relationship between leader affiliative humor and employees' bootleg innovation.