Public Concern and Awareness of National Parks in China: Evidence from Social Media Big Data and Questionnaire Data

Abstract

The high quality development of national parks plays an important role in promoting the formation of a reasonable, moderate and orderly land space protection pattern and building a harmonious coexistence of human and nature. However, a lack of public participation has limited the development of high-quality national parks in China. Understanding public concern and awareness of national parks is necessary for promoting greater public participation. This paper provides insight into this problem by combining Weibo and questionnaire survey data, then uses a combination of text mining, a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) theme model, and descriptive statistics to analyze the current state of public concern and awareness of national parks. By analyzing Weibo data, we find: (1) Public concern for national parks is increasing year by year. (2) More economically developed regions may pay more attention to national parks. (3) Public concern for national parks focuses on the construction of national parks in other countries and the institutional reform and ecotourism of national parks in China. Meanwhile, we also find that: (1) Most of the public are willing to actively pay attention to the construction of national parks. (2) The public is not yet fully aware of national parks in China; for example, the number of national parks, their construction, and other issues are still not widely known. (3) Public awareness of the construction goals, functional positioning, and other issues are not generally understood. To sum up, there is still much room for the public to improve their control and awareness of national parks. Finally, we put forward some suggestions to improve the public’s concern with and awareness of national parks, which can promote public participation in their development. This study will be important for sustainable development of the natural reserve system and global biodiversity protection in China.