The land transfer system is widely regarded as a key institutional arrangement for advancing agricultural modernization and rural transformation. Drawing on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) and from the perspective of farmer differentiation, this study investigates the effects of land transfer on rural household livelihood resilience using China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data from 2012 to 2020. The results indicate the following: (1) Land transfer significantly improves rural household livelihood resilience overall, but this effect is mainly driven by land transfer-out. (2) Land transfer exhibits a clear threshold effect on livelihood resilience. Land transfer-out has a negative impact at low levels of off-farm employment but turns positive after the threshold is crossed, with increasing effects at higher levels of non-farm engagement. Land transfer-in has a significant positive effect on livelihood resilience only above a certain asset. (3) Farmer differentiation is a critical mechanism. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that differences in livelihood strategies and initial geographical conditions affect households’ reliance on land and agricultural productivity, thereby altering the impact of land transfer on livelihood resilience. These findings demonstrate that policies should adopt differentiated interventions rather than a one-size-fits-all approach in order to better align land transfer with the livelihood strategies of rural households.
Zhu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.