Land transfer involves economic issues like expected costs and benefits and the social issue as farmers’ social psychology.It is of great importance to explore the impacts of farmers’ risk attitude and risk perception on their land transfer behaviors and give a reasonable explanation for the involution trap of land rental markets.Based on panel data of 1 429 households from 15 counties in Henan,Shandong,Anhui,Hebei and Jiangsu,we made empirical regressions with logit,ordered-logit and tobit models,and tested the mediating effect of risk attitude.The results show that farmers’ risk aversion attitude had a significantly negative effect on the land renting-in decision,but a significantly positive effect on the land renting-out decision,among which risk perception played a mediating effect.With risk attitude controlled,risk perception still played a negative effect on farmers’ land transfer decisions and scales.The increasing land rental fee and fluctuating grain price increased farmers’ risk perception and hampered farmers’ willingness to rentin land,which explained the involution trap of land rental markets.To assure the stable and healthy development of land rental markets,we suggest the Chinese government widen the coverage of agricultural insurances,increase the scale of compensation,establish a guidance mechanism for the land rental price,and maintain the agricultural commodity price with a more efficient price forming mechanismp so as to accelerate the development of land transfer market in a healthy and rapid way.