Abstract: Using the Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis Framework and it combining with the Theory of Planned Behavior, we construct an integrated “capital-cognition” model. Based on micro survey data of 731 farming households from 40 national key rural tourism villages in Ningxia, the Multinomial Logit model(MNL) is adopted to empirically test the impacts of livelihood capital and ecological cognition on farmers, livelihood transition. The findings are as follows:(1) Among the dimensions of farmers' livelihood capital, the contribution to livelihood transition is in the descending order of social capital, financial capital, human capital, physical capital and natural capital, and natural capital exerts an inhibitory effect on the livelihood transition of conservative farmers.(2) As a key psychological variable, ecological cognition optimizes the transformation process by enhancing the efficiency of capital allocation, and farmers with high ecological cognition show a significant tendency to choose breakthrough-oriented livelihoods.(3) The interaction effect analysis reveals that the synergy between livelihood capital and ecological cognition only exerts a significant inhibitory effect on farmers' livelihood transition from the improved type to the breakthrough type. The heterogeneity analysis shows that there is obvious age differentiation in livelihood transition: the middle-aged group is driven by both capital and cognition, the young group is more easily driven by cognition, and the elderly group faces dual constraints from both. To safeguard the development of farmers' sustainable livelihoods and consolidate and expand the achievements of poverty alleviation, efforts should be made to boost the high-quality transformation of farmers, livelihoods from four aspects: activating natural capital, constructing psychological incentives, implementing targeted policy empowerment, and promoting collaborative governance.