Governance of recreation and tourism partnerships in parks and protected areas

Abstract

This paper uses 10 criteria for governance to evaluate the eight management models that most commonly underpin recreation and tourism partnerships in parks and protected areas. The varying financial status, political propensities and history in different countries have led to the development of different approaches to partnership management. When governance criteria were applied to the management models, those with high involvement by nonprofit organizations ranked higher in terms of the ideals of good governance. The highest ranked model was the public, nonprofit combination model. Conversely, those models with high degrees of for-profit operations ranked lower. The lowest ranked model was the aboriginal and government model. The analysis suggests that the 10 criteria for governance are not treated equally in practice; financial efficiency may be a pivotal criterion given more importance.

Keywords:

• governance
• management
• parks
• partnerships
• protected areas
• tourism

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Windekind Buteau-Duitschaever, Bonnie McCutcheon, Troy Glover, Mark Havitz, Karen Gallant and Mohsin Farooque for comments on various aspects of this paper. Three anonymous reviewers and the two editors made many useful comments that improved the paper. Special thanks to John Mason, the executive Director of the Nature Conservation Research Centre of Ghana, for up-to-date information on community conservation areas in Africa.