Abstract: Since the 1980s, China has entered a forest transition phase, which has brought us more ecological environment services. However, it still lacks a systematic understanding of the micro-mechanisms of the forest transition on household scale, which has restricted making targeted measures for restoration of forest vegetation. Based on a field survey of 1 015 households in the “two wings” region of Chongqing Municipality, using tools of participatory rural appraisal (PRA), this paper systematically analyzes the micro-mechanisms of forest transition and their influencing factors. The results show that: 1) The micro-mechanisms of forest transition include firewood substitution, cultivated land abandonment, decrease in numbers of livestock breeding and fruit planting. In terms of firewood substitution, firewood consumption per capita and the proportion of firewood consumption decreased by 354.31 kgce and 3.46% from 2003 to 2011, respectively. For cultivated land abandonment, the area of cultivated land abandonment tended to increase since the 1980s and reached the peak between 2008 and 2011. For livestock breeding, nearly 80% of investigated rural households reduced the number of livestock by 2011. As to fruit planting, although it was ever an important factor of forest transition in other regions of the world, the total area of fruit planted by the investigated households is only 9.85 hm². 2) As the underlying cause, off-farm employment is not only in favor of firewood substitution and fruit planting, but also the reason of cultivated land abandonment and decrease in numbers of livestock breeding. In addition, the four micro-mechanisms of forest transition are also affected by other factors. For firewood, improving the availability of alternative energy (e.g. coal, liquefied gas), and speeding up the implementation of biogas policy can speed up firewood substitution. For abandonment, property of cultivated land (e.g. radius of farming, land quality), and invasion of wild boar can result in cultivated land abandonment. Meanwhile, disaster risk, lack of irrigation, and abandonment behavior of other farmers also have a litter impact on cultivated land abandonment. For fruit industry, the government encouraging policies can accelerate the development of fruit industry. The results perfectly reveal the development of four micro-mechanisms of forest transition in mountainous areas of Chongqing city and their influencing factors, which provides a scientific basis for policy-making to coordinate the contradiction between forest restoration and food safety.