Agricultural productive services as a crucial lever for integrating small farmers into modern agriculture, facilitate small farmers in achieving economies of scale. Drawing upon survey data from 247 wheat farmers in Shandong Province in 2023, this paper initially employed the Logit model to analyze the influencing factors of the adoption of productive services. Subsequently, it utilized the ISM model to stratify these factors for discussion, thereby delineating the decision-making pathway of outsourcing agricultural productive services from the transaction cost perspective. The empirical results showed that service cognition, organizational convenience, own agricultural tools, wheat yield, agricultural technology training, social network, number of disasters, joining cooperatives and paying attention to grain prices significantly influenced farmers’ outsourcing behavior. The decision-making drivers could be categorized into two distinct pathways: ‘externally-driven’ and ‘internally-driven’ mechanisms. In light of these findings, the study proposed three strategic recommendations: establishing a hierarchical service provider network with precision service mechanisms, enhancing the dual-drive system integrating digital empowerment and institutional coordination, and implementing systematic transformation of production factors.