Due to a severe degradation of the wetland ecosystem in China, great efforts have been devoted to promote farmers’ willingness to participate in wetland restoration. As the decision‐making body, farmer's willingness to participate is critical to wetland restoration. It is thus important to understand factors that will affect farmers’ willingness to participate and their levels of participation. Using a survey sample of 1,009 farmers from the Poyang Lake wetland area in China, this article applies a hurdle model to empirically investigate the factors affecting individual farmers’ sequential decisions on whether or not to participate and how much land to enroll in wetland restoration. Results suggest that farmers’ information and knowledge about wetland restoration compensation policy is crucial in determining whether or not to participate in the first stage. Meanwhile, individual farmer characteristics and household attributes play different roles in influencing farmers’ participation decisions and acreage enrollment decisions. This study provides useful insights to identify effective policy instruments to motivate participation and ensure success of such policies.