As a policy tool to deal with environmental problem, the purpose of ecological compensation is to translate external,non-market value of ecosystem into real financial incentives for local actors to increase the ecosystem service.Therefore, it is the focus and hotspot of the ecological theoretical researchers and practitioner whether the ecological compensation program achieves the expected goals.Based on the recent theoretical and empirical developments of ecological compensation efficiency, we introduce the framework to analyze the efficiency of ecological compensation and analyze various types of inefficiency that the ecological compensation program might experience.Then,we summarize systematically the influencing factors of ecological compensation efficiency, find that the ecological compensation efficiency is not only determined by the extent to which incremental ecosystem services are provided, but also by the cost at which this was achieved.Whether the ecological compensation program succeeds in generating the desired ecosystem service depends on the potential service providers must enroll in the program, providers must comply with the terms of their contract, additionality, the relationship between land use and ecosystem services, permanence, leakage and perverse incentives.And the costs include the opportunity cost of the benefits foregone from alternative activities,the implementation cost of making and maintaining those changes and the transaction costs of the program.At last, we provide the measures of improving the ecological compensation efficiency,which include establishing the accuracy ecological compensation baseline, spatial targeting of ecological compensation, estimating the real opportunity cost and reducing the transaction cost. Some potential improvements in some further researches is put forward in the last section.