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Environmental Management (2008) 42:10171025 DOI 10.1007/s00267-008-9214-3
Distribution of Economic Benets from Ecotourism: A Case Study of Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in China
Guangming He Xiaodong Chen Wei Liu Scott Bearer Shiqiang Zhou Lily Yeqing Cheng Hemin Zhang Zhiyun Ouyang Jianguo Liu
Received: 21 September 2006 / Accepted: 28 August 2008 / Published online: 14 October 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
Abstract Ecotourism is widely promoted as a conservation tool and actively practiced in protected areas worldwide. Theoretically, support for conservation from the various types of stakeholder inside and outside protected areas is maximized if stakeholders benet proportionally to the opportunity costs they bear. The disproportional benet distribution among stakeholders can erode their support for or lead to the failure of ecotourism and conservation. Using Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas (China) as an example, we demonstrate two types of uneven distribution of economic benets among four major groups of stakeholders. First, a signicant inequality exists between the local rural residents and the other types of stakeholder. The rural residents are the primary bearers of the cost of conservation, but the majority of economic
benets (investment, employment, and goods) in three key ecotourism sectors (infrastructural construction, hotels/ restaurants, and souvenir sales) go to other stakeholders. Second, results show that the distribution of economic benets is unequal among the rural residents inside the reserve. Most rural households that benet from ecotourism are located near the main road and potentially have less impact on panda habitat than households far from the road and closer to panda habitats. This distribution gap is likely to discourage conservation support from the latter households, whose activities are the main forces degrading panda habitats. We suggest that the unequal distribution of the benets from ecotourism can be lessened by enhancing local participation, increasing the use of local goods, and encouraging relocation of rural households closer to ecotourism facilities.
Keywords China Conservation and development
Distribution inequality Economic benet Ecotourism
Giant panda Wolong Nature Reserve
Introduction
Worldwide, many countries and regions rich in biodiversity and poor in economy have been vigorously promoting ecotourism as a conservation tool in their protected areas (PAs) since the 1990s. These include Nepal (Bookbinder and others 1998), Indonesia (Walpole and Goodwin 2000, 2001), Uganda (Adams and Ineld...