The social value of cultivated land resources is a key element in promoting the paid use of natural resource assets. It also promotes innovation in the concept and model of cultivated land protection, enhances the efficiency of cultivated land protection and responds to the requirements of the time for long-term protection of cultivated lands. Taking the rapidly urbanizing Hefei metropolitan area as the research object, the article constructed an accounting system for the social value of cultivated land resources from the dual dimensions of social security value and social stability value. This study comprehensively employed accounting methods such as income restoration method, alternative market method, and shadow price method, as well as econometric models such as spatial correlation analysis, spatial trend analysis, OLS classic linear regression, and geographically weighted regression to explore the spatiotemporal heterogeneity and the influencing factors of the social value of cultivated land resources. Research showed that:(1)in the past 15 years, the social value of cultivated land resources in the study area increased by 1.22 times, with 10 districts and counties exceeding 4.5 million yuan/hm2. The social value of cultivated land resources showed an overall growing trend, with significant spatial heterogeneity. The gap between the southern regions and the northern regions was particularly significant, indicating a spatial layout characteristic of "high in the south and low in the north". (2)The social value of cultivated land resources showed a significant positive global spatial autocorrelation. The local autocorrelation agglomeration trend had been continuously strengthened over the past 15 years, especially in the high-high agglomeration areas concentrated in the southeast of the Hefei metropolitan area. The spatial trend analysis showed a more flattened trend, especially in the southeast where the social value of cultivated land resources grew rapidly. (3)Based on the results and taking into account the natural dimension, economic dimension and social dimension, this paper theoretically explained the impact mechanism of " nature to solidify the foundation, economy to guarantee, and society to promote and regulate”. This study further demonstrated that the per capita cultivated land area, average elevation, population density, and per capita fixed assets investment played a reverse inhibitory role in general. The agricultural output value played a positive role in the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery, as well as the per capita total retail consumption. This article deepened the research on the social value accounting and its impact of cultivated land resources to a certain extent. Feasible strategies from three aspects were also proposed: strengthening government macroeconomic regulation, highlighting the social value of cultivated land resources, and closely adhering to regional spatiotemporal heterogeneity characteristics, in an attempt to provide theoretical support and practical reference for deepening the social value accounting and an improved protection of cultivated land resources.