Agricultural and forest productive diversification is often presented as a way to improve local livelihoods and prevent ecosystem degradation and deforestation. Productive diversification also depends on multiple socioeconomic drivers-like cultural knowledge, household migration, productive capacity, and market access-that shape agriculture and forest productive strategies and influence their ecological impacts. Our empirical comparison of indigenous Amerindians and settlers in the Bolivian Amazon allows a better understanding of how different rural societies develop different productive diversification strategies in similar ecological contexts and how the related economic and sociocultural aspects of diversification are associated with land cover changes. Our results suggest that although the indigenous Tsimane' cause less deforestation and diversify more, there is no direct correlation between individual household diversification and deforestation. A multidimensional approach linking sociocognitive, economic, and ecological patterns of diversification helps explain this contradiction.