Abstract: Land use cover/change (LUCC) is one of the main methods to represent the land use function. There is an emerging consensus among scholars that land use system cannot be fully understood by the LUCC alone, and land use function should be paid more attention in the future. It becomes urgent to discuss and understand the interaction mechanism between the macro land use function pattern and the micro behavior of the land use agent. In this paper, two issues, namely the representation of land use function and the farmers’ respond under the change of the land use function are explored and illustrated. Several conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) the method of representing the land use function should be improved, the information of the macro pattern of the land use function and the micro stakeholders’ land use behavior should be included. (2) The models to simulate the land use function may be established using the theory and method of decision-making and the integration of the land use models at different levels. The future research will be the construction of the limited rational decision-make model about the farmers’ response under the change of land use function and the exploration of ways and methods of multi-model integration. It is vital in both theory and practice to understand the response of farmers to the change of macro land use function, and to guide farmers’ land use behavior.

Key words: the categories of the land use function, micro agent, land use behavior of farmers, simulation