Soil infiltration is a hydrological process dramatically affected by land use/cover changes. Taking the miscellaneous woody forest (MWF), a natural vegetation cover in the Dabie mountainous area, China, as the reference (control), this study aimed to evaluate the effect of litter, root traits, and soil properties on soil infiltrability and quantify the characteristics of soil infiltration processes of four intensively-managed sloping economic forests, including Castanea Mollissima forest (CMF), Castanea Mollissima-tea inter-planting forest (CMTF), Camellia Oleifera forest (COF), and Camellia Oleifera-tea inter-planting forest (COTF). The results showed that significant differences in soil water infiltration under different land use and management types (p < 0.05). Soil initial infiltration rate (IIR), average infiltration (AIR) and steady infiltration rate (SIR) decreased 39.63%-60.88%, 46.11%-67.39% and 49.88%-72.8%, respectively after the native forests were developed to economic forests, following the order: MWF > CMTF > COTF > CMF > COTF, but no significant difference was found between CMTF and COTF (p > 0.05). Soil water infiltration characteristics measured by IIR, AIR, and SIR were positively correlated to litter coverage, litter thickness, the maximum water-holding capacity of the litter, effective water-retention capacity, maximum water-retention capacity, root traits, capillary porosity, non-capillary porosity, total porosity, soil organic matter, and clay and silt content (p < 0.05), but negatively correlated with the bulk density, and sand and gravel content (p < 0.05). Variation partitioning analysis showed that soil water infiltration was more susceptible to soil properties than litter characteristics or root traits. The redundancy analysis explained 99.97 % of the variation to explore the relationship between litter characteristics, root traits, soil properties, and soil water infiltration characteristics, and the clay content is the main factor affecting soil water infiltration. The structural equation model suggested that land use and management indirectly affect soil infiltrability by modulating soil properties through affecting litter and root traits, with clay content having a higher contribution.