This study aims to investigate the paradox whereby facility vegetable farmers do not expand production scale despite high economic returns and rising output efficiency. Drawing on a set of survey data from 1 147 farmers across eight cities in Hebei Province from June 2023 to January 2024, nonlinear effect models and quantile regressions were used for analysis. The results show that: 1) There is an inverted “U” shaped relationship between the operation scale of facility vegetables and the output efficiency, and the optimal scale interval corresponding to the efficiency peak is 1.09 to 1.23 hm². 2) As the scale expands, farmers’ dependence on external labor increases, and the proportion, cost, and structural changes of hired laborers are significant. The hired labor presents a dynamic transformation mechanism in which “high-efficiency labor” and “low-efficiency labor” coexist, which is an important reason for the inverted “U” shaped relationship between the scale-efficiency of facility vegetables. 3) Brick-wall greenhouses and autumn-winter crops show early efficiency improvements, but the marginal cost rapidly increases when it exceeds thresholds. Plastic greenhouses and summer crops, due to environmental and output instability, are difficult to achieve sustained efficiency gains through scale expansion. Hired labor allocation efficiency is the core constraint on scale expansion, reflecting a trade-off between specialization benefits and rising management costs. Efficiency differences across facility types and crop seasons underline the importance to optimize labor use and improve management in facility agriculture.
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