Studies on the hydrolysis of bamboo shoot shell to levulinic acid with ionic liquid using Box-Behnken design were carried out. A regression model was developed to describe the effects of independent variables and their interactions on levulinic acid yield. The P-value of coefficient for R-ionic liquid and reaction time were <0.0001 and 0.005, respectively, suggesting that the two effects were significant. The coefficient determination (R-2 = 96.18%) for the second-order model showed that good agreement between the experimental and modeled data was obtained. Confirmatory tests, with a levulinic acid yield of 38.2%, were obtained under the optimum conditions, which closely agreed with the predicted value.