Community Participation and Preferences Regarding Conservation and Development Policies in China’s Giant Panda Nature Reserves

Ben Ma,Yali Wen

doi:10.3390/su11184852

Abstract

Community participation in conservation activities is an important mechanism to coordinate the conflicts between conservation and local development. Hence, it is necessary to understand farmers’ preferences for different conservation and development policies. By surveying households residing inside and outside the four giant panda nature reserves in the Qinling Mountains, China, in 2018, this study uses a choice experiment model to evaluate participation willingness and stated preferences regarding the establishment of national parks (NPs), ecotourism development, ecological public welfare forest compensation, and provision of ecological jobs. Our results suggest that these conservation and development policies all have a positive impact on community participation in conservation. Among the different conservation and development policies, farmers seem to prefer the government developing ecotourism most, followed by providing ecological jobs, establishing NPs, and finally the compensation amount and period of ecological public welfare forests. Moreover, farmers with different characteristics have different preferences regarding conservation and development policies. Age, education level, whether the respondent is a village cadre, family forestland area, family income, and whether the respondent lives in a nature reserve are relevant socio-economic characteristics of the affected farmers.

Highlights

Policymakers tout community participation as an effective tool in the coordination of biodiversity conservation and community development [1,2]
The national parks (NPs) management system emphasizes the importance of community participation, and this is expected by the communities
Farmers have different preferences for different conservation and development policies. They have the highest preference for ecotourism development, followed by ecological jobs, establishment of NPs, and the compensation amount and period for the ecological public welfare forest

Summary

Introduction

Policymakers tout community participation as an effective tool in the coordination of biodiversity conservation and community development [1,2]. Biodiversity hotspots tend to be located in rural areas, where conservation activities may hinder local development due to restricted access to natural resources [5,6]. Most existing studies focus on the livelihoods and ecological impacts of conservation and development policies [9,10]. Some studies have shown that the establishment of PAs has no significant impact on community livelihoods [11,12]. Most studies have shown that the establishment of PAs has increased community poverty [13,14,15,16,17]. The positive impact of the establishment of PAs on the community has increasingly been confirmed [18,19]. Community-based ecotourism was found to increase income inequality in Colombia and Qinling, China [28,29]

Methods

Results

Conclusion