Given the high proportion of private rural land in the Atlantic forest of Brazil, landowners play a key role in the achievement of forest restoration and protection at the national level. The Native Vegetation Protection Law of 2012 is one of the main instruments to encourage reforestation on private land. However, as forest restoration can be quite time-demanding and costly for landowners, the integration of socio-economic aspects and the creation of enabling conditions for them to restore their lands, is being one of the main challenges of the current approaches of forest restoration (PLANAVEG). In this context, understanding landowners’ main obstacles and expectations is key to propose sustainable restoration approaches that favor landowners’ engagement and upscale forest landscape restoration. This study thus aimed at analyzing landowners’ perception of forest ecosystem services and restoration in order to evaluate how it impedes their land use behavior and their willingness to restore their land in the Atlantic forest biome. To answer the question, a systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews were performed with landowners in two municipalities of Rio de Janeiro state. Results highlighted that landowners have consequent ecological knowledge and appreciation of forests, even if they don’t perceive all socio-economic benefits of restoration. The main obstacles to forest restoration are their lack of access to financial means and awareness regarding socio-economic opportunities of restoration approaches. The recommendation resulting from this work to upscale forest restoration in the most efficient way is to couple prioritization of forest restoration from law incentives with a combination of economic incentives and new approaches of restoration based on socio-economic benefits for landowners. These approaches should propose more assistance and guidance to support landowners’ confidence in becoming actors of change, thus empowering them through this process.