Abstract: Terraces are important cropland resources in mountainous areas, but with the advancement of urbanisation, the phenomenon of terrace abandonment has become more and more significant. Revealing the spatial differentiation characteristics and influence mechanism of terrace abandonment can provide reference for the sustainable use of terraces in mountainous areas. Cropland abandonment is an extreme phenomenon in the process of marginalization. Therefore, based on the perspective of cropland marginalisation, this paper constructs an indicator system of distributional characteristics, explores the characteristics of terraces abandonment-prone areas, and at the same time, adopts the average nearest-neighbour index and the independent samples t-test to reveal the aggregation characteristics and neighbourhood effect of terraces abandonment respectively. Finally, the impact mechanism of terrace abandonment is analysed based on the‘cost-benefit’perspective and a binary logistic regression model. The results show that: 1) Terraces are most vulnerable to abandonment if their slope, difference in height from settlements, the distance from settlements, elevation and distance from the nearest road are greater, but their distance from the terrace to the forested area is less. 2) The terraces in abandonment have aggregation characteristics, but the degree of aggregation is lower on the abandoned terraces than on the ploughed terraces, and it may be due to the fact that cultivated terraces need to be centralised in order to save as much labour cost as possible, and the process of abandonment usually starts with the most marginal terraces, which are more susceptible to wildlife encroachment. 3) Compared to abandoned sloping cropland, abandoned terraces have a stronger neighbourhood effect, with abandoned terraces being more affected by surrounding abandoned cropland. The impact of abandoned cropland on terrace abandonment generally occurs within a range of 100 m, and tends to decrease and level off when the range exceeds 100 m. The strongest impact of abandoned cropland on terrace abandonment occurs in the 10m range, where the abandonment rate of terraces is as high as 60 percent. 4) At the plot scale, whether terraces are abandoned or not is affected by the endowment of terraced plots, in which variables such as topographic conditions, the distance from settlements, shape of the plot and so on are positively correlated with terrace abandonment, and variables such as quality of terraces and size of the plot are negatively correlated with terrace abandonment. The root cause of terrace abandonment is that urbanisation and industrialisation lead to higher labour costs, forcing farmers to abandon less productive terraces. In this process, the endowment of a single terrace will affect the costs and benefits of farming, which will then prompt farmers to make a decision on whether to abandon the terrace or not. At the same time, the neighbourhood effect of abandoned terraces will form a negative feedback mechanism, further contributing to the spread of terrace abandonment. In the future, the introduction, research and development and upgrading of suitable machinery for farming should be emphasised in the management of terraces. At the same time, it is necessary to combine social capital to create a ‘production + culture and tourism’ terrace complex, and further improve the management system of terraces. We should also pay attention to the existence of regional differences and diversify the design of policies for the sustainable use of terraces.