In the establishment of watershed ecological compensation mechanism, the willingness and behavior of ecological compensation of relevant stakeholders is essential to the management and execution of policies. This article uses choice experiment to examine the willingness to pay (WTP) of the residents in the midstream and downstream of of Weihe watershed. We empirically analyzed the WTP of urban and rural residents and the respondents' preferences by the Mixed Logit model. The results showed that the choice of urban and rural residents was positively affected by water quality, river area/water, soil and water loss situation, and the animal species/quantity, while negatively affected by payments. Secondly, the urban and rural residents had the highest willingness to pay for the property of water quality, the second highest willingness to pay for the property of river area/water volume, and the lowest willingness to pay for the property of animal species/number. Finally, the average WTP of the urban and rural residents was respectively 13.168 yuan/month/ person and 9.050 yuan/month/person. The former WTP was significantly higher than the latter.