Along with spreading of negative campaign on palm oil, Indonesian government established a regulation requiring all palm oil plantations to be certified by ISPO and it supposed to be achieved in 2025. On the other side, ISPO itself contained of many criterias that is difficult to complied by smallholder such as the land legalities, Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), and other obligation that should be addressed as a whole. This paper aimed to (1) see the difference in socioeconomic characteristics between independent and managed smallholders, (2) identify the mandatory sustainable scheme from the independent and managed smallholder perspectives as well as (3) analyze the compliance of smallholder towards the sustainability standard of ISPO. One hundred and fifty smallholders of Padang Lawas Regency, North Sumatera were interviewed by using the structured quetionnare to collect the data in terms of socio-economic characteristics, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, intention, and compliance towards ISPO sustainability standards. The results of the study showed that socioeconomic characteristics of independent and managed smallholder are significantly different in term of ages, education, family member, experiences, farm sizes, and on farm income. Besides, there is a gap between the preferences of managed and independent smallholder towards ISPO sustainability standards. It is implied by the behavioral variables of attitude, subjective norm, PBC, and intention to comply with the sustainable scheme. However, both of smallholders considered to have bad compliance towards the standard of ISPO.