Agricultural ecological compensation is an important policy incentive method that is used to support and protect agriculture development. Research on the estimation and measurement methods of the compensation standard has continually been a focus within academic circles. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) is the preferred method and the most widely adopted method by the international community for non-market valuation. CVM is based on the theory of welfare economics with the characteristics of consumer utility consent, and uses the utility indexes of willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) to measure environmental items increase or decrease through survey experiments, and to assess the economic value of environmental services. Because CVM has been applied to the field of agricultural ecological compensation for a short time, and because of the weak quality of agriculture and the low level of farmers' cognition, the domestic real evidence studies of CVM are faced with many confusing issues. This study first clarified the scientific connotation and theoretical basis of CVM, and then fully and systematically examined the CVM research progress and representative cases in the field of agriculture compensation, both at home and abroad. The results showed that domestic research was still at the stage of theoretical explorations and pilot demonstration of policy projects. Therefore, there are large gaps in the economic assessment of regional agricultural development projects, and in providing the decision service for the agricultural environment and subsidy policies. The imaginary characteristic deviation, research technical means deviation, and the survey implementation deviation are discussed. These deviations existed in the application of CVM to evaluate the agricultural ecological compensation policy survey practice. This survey was conducted based on the willingness of farmers to adopt cleaner agricultural production technologies, provided by the researchers. This study then described reasonable technological approaches and countermeasures to avoid possible deviations, including establishing the hypothetical market close to real markets, clearing scope of measurement models, carrying out the validity and reliability inspection of CVM, and choosing two dimension evaluations and handling deviations in the investigation processes. This study analyzed the possible deviations and measures for the application of CVM in the field of agricultural ecological compensation, and the practical application was provided in two ways: (1) theoretical guidance to improve the accuracy and effectiveness for the compensation standard by CVM and (2) methods and ideas to surmount the application obstacles in agriculture ecological compensation policy in China. Therefore, this study has important practical significance and reference value. Finally, the inadequacy and limitations of the research were discussed, including: a lack of scientific analysis for the reasons of the deviation generation, a lack of empirical testing of the deviation processing method, and a lack of universal applicability of the solution. Therefore, in order to provide better services for government decision-making, the future study of CVM should apply improved and expanded research methods and contents.