Abstract: To address the unclear rock burst prevention mechanism of underground directional hydraulic fracturing for a near-field hard roof, this study took the 302 working face of a coal mine in Inner Mongolia as the engineering background. Using a combination of theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and field tests, it investigated the overburden movement and structural fracture, stress evolution, and energy release characteristics of the fractured stope, and revealed the rock burst prevention mechanism. Theoretical analysis results indicate that the peak mining-induced stress in the working face with a near-field thick-hard roof declines as the roof fracture span decreases. Hydraulic fracturing achieves mining-induced stress regulation by altering the rock strata fracture angle and the periodic fracture mode. Numerical simulation results reveal that compared with the unfractured model, after fracturing of the near-field key stratum, the average fracture angle increases by 14.4°, and the peak contact forces during initial and periodic fractures decrease by 32.8% and 19.9%, respectively. The overburden displacement and microseismic activity in the stope are remarkably enhanced. To be specific, the maximum displacement in the overburden coupled zone grows by approximately 3.7 m; the total frequency of microseismic events rises 3.6-fold, while the frequency of events with energy greater than 1×10⁵ J falls by 82.6%, suggesting a transformation of microseismic activity from "low-frequency, high-energy" to "high-frequency, low-energy". Field tests show that after fracturing, the roof weighting range of the working face is noticeably reduced, the continuous weighting length stabilizes at 6–8 m, and the proportion of microseismic events with energy greater than 5×10³ J drops to 1.2%. By increasing the fracture angle of the near-field key stratum, altering its periodic fracture mode, and changing the microseismic energy-frequency characteristics of the stope, underground hydraulic fracturing achieves mining-induced stress regulation and rock burst prevention. The research results can provide a reference for rock burst prevention under similar conditions.