Ecological restoration policies and their implementation are influenced by ecological and socioeconomic drivers. Top-down approach-based spatial planning, emphasizing hierarchical control within government structures, and without a comprehensive consideration of social-ecological interactions may result in implementation failure and low efficiency. Although many researchers have indicated the necessity to engage social-ecological interactions between stakeholders in effective planning processes, socioeconomic drivers of ecological restoration on a large scale are difficult to quantify because of data scarcity and knowledge limitations. Here, we established a new ecological restoration planning approach linking a social-ecological system framework to large-scale ecological restoration planning. The new spatial planning approach integrates bottom-up approaches targeting stakeholder interests and provides social considerations for stakeholder behavior analysis. Based on this approach, a meta-analysis is introduced to recognize key socioeconomic and social-ecological factors influencing large-scale ecological restoration implementation, and a stochastic model is constructed to analyze the impact of socioeconomic drivers on the behavior of authorities and participants on a large scale. We used the Yangtze River Basin-based Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP), one of the largest payments for ecosystem service programs worldwide, to quantify the socioeconomic impacts of large-scale ecological restoration programs. Current CCFP planning without socioeconomic considerations failed to achieve large-scale program goals and showed low investment efficiency, with 19.71% of the implemented area reconverting to cropland after contract expiry. In contrast, spatial matching between planned and actual restoration increased from 61.55% to 81.86% when socioeconomic drivers were included. In addition, compared to that with the current CCFP implementation, the cost effectiveness of spatial planning with social considerations improved by 46.94%. Thus, spatial optimization planning that integrates both top-down and bottom-up approaches can result in more practical and effective ecological restoration than top-down approaches alone. Our new approach incorporates socioeconomic factors into large-scale ecological restoration planning with high practicality and efficiency.

• Large scale eco-restoration programs (LSERPs) are socio-ecological systems (SESs).

• A new framework for SESs integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches was established.

• The bottom-up approach integrated meta-analysis and stochastic modeling.

• The new framework was tested on the Yangtze River Basin-based Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program.

• Embedding bottom-up approaches improved the practicality and efficiency of LSERP planning.