The governance of Nature-Based tourism in china: Issues and research perspectives

The design and establishment of an appropriate governance system for protected areas has been a major concern of national tourism authorities when countries are facing political/administrative reforms, financial challenges, and sociocultural changes. This article presents a critique of the governance discourse; on the basis of a review of new public management research and practice, an analytical framework is proposed for the scrutiny of governance of nature-based tourism in the current social, economic, and political contexts of China. Private sector involvement is discussed at length in the development of nature-based tourism in protected areas of China; the study also addresses issues pertaining to public ownership of land, transfers of managerial rights, and public–private partnerships and their corresponding supervision mechanism, with an intent to elucidate innovative governance approaches to the planning and management of nature-based tourism in protected areas of this socialist regime.