Agroecosystems are complex socio-ecological systems that are managed by farmers to achieve desired outcomes, including economic income and environmental benefits contributed by ecosystem services (ES). Therefore, understanding farmers’ attitudes for ES will provide references for targeted agricultural environment management, which is critical to achieving the sustainable development of agriculture. The aim of this study is to identify the attitudes of farmers regarding ES, and to test whether and how annual household income and social demographic characteristics affect farmers’ attitudes toward ES. Using face-to-face interviews to collect data and the hypothesis of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) to provide an analytical framework, the results reveal that, in general, the perceptions of farmers’ attitudes on ES are highly complex, caused by characteristics of the farmers. Furthermore, the inflection points of the U-shaped curves, where priorities change from increasing income to paying more attention to waste assimilation and biological pest control, are identified at 17,091 and 25,071RMB, respectively. Initiatives that aim to achieve sustainable agricultural development by strengthening ES provisions should be sensitive to farmers’perceptions. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen farmers’ educational attainment, concentrate fragmented cultivation area and create reasonable incentives for preserving and restoring of ES and increasing farmers’ income together, which then can enhance the positive outcomes from income growth.

In recent years, environmental degradation and the COVID-19 pandemic have seriously affected economic development and social stability. Addressing the impact of major public health events on residents’ willingness to pay for environmental protection (WTPEP) and analyzing the drivers are necessary for improving human well-being and environmental sustainability. We designed a questionnaire to analyze the change in residents’ WTPEP before and during COVID-19 and an established ordinary least squares (OLS), spatial lag model (SLM), spatial error model (SEM), geographically weighted regression (GWR), and multiscale GWR to explore driver factors and scale effects of WTPEP based on the theory of environment Kuznets curve (EKC). The results show that (1) WTPEP is 0–20,000 yuan before COVID-19 and 0–50,000 yuan during COVID-19. Residents’ WTPEP improved during COVID-19, which indicates that residents’ demand for an ecological environment is increasing; (2) The shapes and inflection points of the relationships between income and WTPEP are spatially heterogeneous before and during COVID-19, but the northern WTPEP is larger than southern, which indicates that there is a spatial imbalance in WTPEP; (3) Environmental degradation, health, environmental quality, and education are WTPEP’s significant macro-drivers, whereas income, age, and gender are significant micro-drivers. Those factors can help policymakers better understand which factors are more suitable for macro or micro environmental policy-making and what targeted measures could be taken to solve the contradiction between the growing ecological environment demand of residents and the spatial imbalance of WTPEP in the future.

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