[Objective] To study the mechanism of effective participation of famers in rural land consolidation project in order to provide basis for policy making of the government.[Methods] Based on the survey data from 26 rural land consolidation project in Hubei Province, this paper used quantile regression and anti-fact decomposition model to investigate the differences and causes of effective participation of farmers between hilly engineering mode area and pre-service plain engineering mode area.[Results] ① The increase of participation ability, opportunity and motivation of farmers had an important effect on improvement of effective participation. ② The feature differences caused by the participation ability of farmers explained the most part of effective participation difference, but the coefficient differences caused by the participation opportunity and motivation of farmers also should not be neglected.[Conclusion] The enhancement of participation ability, the increase of participation opportunity and the promotion of participation have important impacts on the effective participation of farmers. Meanwhile, the land resource department of the government should make relevant incentive policy according to the actual situation to improve the effective participation of farmers in different area.