The rural residential land often scattered in distribution especially in mountainous areas, which was restricted by terrain factors such as slope and elevation with lower intensive degree of utilization, imperfect infrastructure and lower utilization rate of public service resources. Niche is the total aggregation of living conditions of biological units, which reflects the space, position and function of the individual and population in ecological systems. Rural residential land is the compound carrier for production and living. The suitability evaluation of rural residential land with niche theory can not only reflect the suitable degree of all kinds of economic and production activities, but also indicate the importance of rural residential land in regional ecological system. Qixia City is located in the central of Shandong Peninsula, which is typical of hilly terrain and has the characteristics of intensive mountainous area. According to the requirements of new countryside construction and characteristics of rural residential land in Qixia City, 11 relevant indicators were selected from ecological, productive and living conditions to establish the index system for rural residential land suitability evaluation. Geological disaster, terrain, slope, and water effect were selected as ecological indexes; ratio of industry and commerce land, accessibility of industry and commerce land, cultivated land and garden land area, and accessibility of cultivated land and garden land were selected as productive indexes; road accessibility, rural residential land area, accessibility of town center were selected as living indexes. Accessibility can be summarized as the ability from origin point to attract point by certain transportation, which is deeply affected by the land use and closely related to the concepts of location, space interaction and space scale. On the basis of established evaluation index system, suitability grades were determined by a combination method of accessibility calculation, cluster analysis and suitability evaluation. After that the rural residential land was overlaid with the suitability grades and was divided into key development type, moderate development type, restricted expansion type and prior remediation type based on the suitability evaluation results and cluster analysis, which accounted for 35.19%, 35.10%, 20.29%, and 9.42% respectively. The key development type has superior geographical position, convenient transportation and relatively perfect infrastructure, which is suggested to orderly adjust the internal structure and promote land intensive use. The moderate development type is still in primary stage with more idle land and extensive land use, which is suggested to stimulate deposit land and recycle use the old residential land and idle land. The restricted expansion type is restricted by complicated topography, poor agriculture production and living conditions, which is suggested to maintain the current status, guide the population to move-out and make the old homestead retreat. The prior remediation type is restricted by high relief, fragile ecological environment, isolated to water source and inconvenient transportation; the suggestion of this type is to move the villages. Furthermore, the characteristics of rural residential land use were concluded and corresponding regulation and control measures were suggested. The results showed the current situation and suitability of rural residential land. This study provided theoretical foundations of optimizing the layout of rural residential land, enriched the application of niche theory in different fields and had guiding significance for the consolidation and optimum distribution of mountainous rural residential land.