The reform of collective forest property rights is of great significance to realize the sustainable growth of China’s forest resources from the perspective of collective forest property right and its structure. This paper summarizes and analyzes the research on the reform of collective forest property right and the impact of forest property right security on the change of forest resources at home and abroad in recent 20 years. In order to clarify the research views and disputes on the impact of collective forest property right reform on forest resources, and analyze the defects and future research directions. Most of the existing studies believe that the reform of collective forest property rights can stimulate farmers’ afforestation management and protection, reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and effectively achieve the growth of forest resources. The existing literature provides valuable clues for further research on the relationship between the two, but the existing theoretical research fails to investigate the objective situation of China’s non-agricultural transfer, and ignores the interaction mechanism between forest rights; The empirical study lacks the analysis of the dynamic effects of collective forest property rights on forest resources, and fails to properly deal with the endogenous problems in the model. The future research should be improved from the following aspects: (1) bring the situation of labor non-agricultural transfer into the theoretical model, and investigate the interaction mechanism between forest rights; (2) scientifically identify the dynamic effects of property right and its structure on forest resources; (3) in econometric analysis, we should focus on the endogenous problems caused by measurement bias, missing variables, self-selection bias and two-way causality.

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