Abstract: The quality protection of cultivated land is an important way to realize the storage of grain in the land and to lay a solid foundation for agricultural production. Farmers are the ultimate subjects and the micro-foundation to realize the protection of farmland quality. By making use of the data of farmer household micro-survey in Jiangsu province in 2018, this paper adopts the mvprobit model to quantitatively study the impact of benefit expectation on farmers’ intention and behavior of farmland quality protection. The findings show that benefit expectation is an important factor affecting farmers’ intention and behavior of farmland quality protection. Farmers’ expectation of improving the quality of agricultural products and increasing the yield of farm products through returning straw to the land will increase the probability of farmers’ adoption of the straw returning to the field; and the expectation of improving the quality of agricultural products by applying organic fertilizer and the expectation of increasing the yield of production by deep and loose ploughing will both significantly increase the probability of adoption. Based on the findings of this study, it is suggested that the relationship between farmers’ benefit expectation and farmland quality protection behavior should be fully utilized, the government should continue to improve the ways and channels to realize high price for high quality agricultural products, improve the expected profits of comparative returns from farmers’ farmland quality protection, reduce risks, and give full play to its exemplary role. In addition, the government should reduce the number of plots, reduce the costs of farmland quality protection, strengthen policy publicity and provide policy support, so as to promote farmland quality protection.

Key words: farmland quality protection, benefit expectation, operation scale