Based on ecology, environmental economics, property right theory as well as public sector economics, this dissertation delves into four aspects of payment mechanisms for forest ecological service---the essentials, the compensation payer and the receiver, the compensation mode as well as the compensation level of the payment scheme through positive analysis and case studies. The whole thesis could be divided into four parts:The first part of the thesis explained how the need for compensation was induced and what's the essential of ecological compensation. The main research results can be summered as follows:① the need for compensation was induced during the course of market oriented reform of China forestry and was not necessary under each kind of forestry economy structure. Chinese forestry economy is now experiencing fundamental transforming and the key for the success of this transforming is to facilitate forest differential forest management. The proper institution arrangement of forest ecological compensation is the prerequisite for the smooth implementation of forest differential forest management.② the essential of forest ecological compensation is to internalize the externalities of ecological forest. Forest ecological service is a kind of public goods and has positive externalities because of the difficulties of defining its property rights. It is the externality that makes it very difficult for market to reflect its economic values and be taken into cost-benefit analysis. ③ Forest ecological service is different in terms of degree of publicity. Such difference could be cited to define the responsibilities of supplying ecological service and therefore could be the basis on which the responsibilities of compensation will be instituted. Forest ecological service could be divided into three kinds of public goods namely international, national and local ones. The responsibility of providing international public goods like forest carbon offset service lies on the whole world while other ecological service need to be provided nationally and locally. Thus the responsibility of compensation for forest ecological service should be divided between the central and the local government.The second part of the thesis focus on the defining of the provider and the receiver of compensation. The main points are as follows:①From the point of view of economics, forest ecological compensation is the transfer of ecological service between different property owners. The word "compensation" emphasized the publicity of the service and the difficulty of transferring through common market. But the essentials remain the same. So compensation will undoubtly involve different property owners. The clear definition of rights and obligations of involved property owners is the prerequisite of forest ecological compensation. Under such a prerequisite, the compensation is in essence a way of embodying the cost of transgresses the boundaries of property rights, or a way of internalizing the externalities of ecological forestry through transferring of property rights.② the payers of forest compensation are the beneficiaries of forest eco-services. This can be easily seen in the market-based compensation mode. In public payment mode, the payers are in fact all the beneficial people of a certain society while the government connects the suppliers and the demanders of forest eco-services.The third part of the thesis focus on the public payment mode and market-based compensation mode. The main points are as follows:① the forest ecological compensation mechanisms can be divided into two kinds, namely the public payment mode and market-based mode according to the degrees of government intervene. Public payment mode is the most widely used mode and is believed to be the most widely used one in the near future around the world. But this dose not means that the public agencies should do every thing. The successful experiences throughout the world showed that the market mechanisms could expediently be used in t