Abstract: Wetland eco-compensation is an important policy tool to solve the problems of wetland ecological environment and effectively alleviate the contradiction between wetland protection and development and utilization, but the eco-compensation policy with the government as the main body often ignores and weakens the rights and interests of farmers. This paper theoretically analyzes the impact of eco-compensation on the willingness and behavior of farmers to protect wetlands, and reveals that the eco-compensation policy can influence the behavioral willingness of the group to form the herd effect, so as to make more farmers participate in the transformation of wetland protection. Taking Poyang lake wetland as an example, this paper introduces the eco-compensation policy, adopts the extended planning behavior theory and structural equation model, and makes an empirical analysis on the impact of eco-compensation policy and psychological factors on farmers’ wetland protection intentions and behaviors. Results showed that: （1） the eco-compensation policy can not only effectively motivate farmers directly participate in the wetland protection, can also through the positive influence on wetland protection will indirectly encourage farmers to participate in the wetland protection, but compared with effects on the wetland protection will significant under 1% level, eco-compensation policies directly affect the effect of wetland protection action only by under 5%, that eco-compensation policies for wetland protection behavior of incentive effect has not been fully play, there is further room for improvement. （2） the psychological variables of local farmers (behavior attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control) have a significant positive impact on the wetland protection intention of farmers, and indirectly affect the wetland protection behavior of farmers by influencing the wetland protection intention. （3） the direct effect of farmers' willingness to protect wetlands on their protection behavior is 0.640, and ecological compensation policies, psychological variables and other factors will indirectly affect wetland protection behavior through their willingness to protect wetlands, which fully demonstrates the importance of their willingness to protect wetlands on their protection behavior. Based on the results of the study, policy suggestions were put forward to improve farmers’ willingness and behavior of wetland protection from the perspective of adjusting wetland eco-compensation policy and strengthening farmers' psychological variables.