Good governance in protected areas: an evaluation of stakeholders’ perceptions in British Columbia and Ontario Provincial Parks

Abstract

As government funding is reduced and tourism-based fees are increasingly used to fund protected area operations, two options are often used for management: transfer of tourism services to the private sector or operation of tourism services by a government agency that functions like a corporation. This paper reports stakeholders’ views concerning governance for two prominent, but different, management models for protected areas’ tourism services in Canada. British Columbia Provincial Parks uses profit-making companies to deliver park services; Ontario Provincial Parks uses the parastatal approach, where park staff members provide most services directly. Surveys of five key stakeholder groups (park staff, visitors, contractors working in park, nearby residents and NGOs with an interest in parks) provided higher rankings of perceptions of governance criteria closer to good governance for the Ontario approach, with important differences found between some groups and amongst some criteria in both park systems. This research suggests that the parastatal model is perceived as superior by important stakeholder groups, using the lens of standard governance criteria, compared to the outsourcing model that uses profit-making companies to provide park tourism services. This finding has implications globally where governments seek to shift park funding from government towards tourism fees and charges.

保护区域的良好的政策治理：对于英哥伦比亚和安达略两省级公园利益相关者态度的分析

当政府资金资助逐渐减少和以旅游为主的费用逐渐增加用于资助保护区域运营时，对于管理经常产生两种选择：将旅游服务转到私营企业中去或者是让旅游服务的运营由一家能像企业运作一样的政府机构来运营。该文章报告了利益相关者对于两大杰出的但是不同的对加拿大保护区域旅游服务设立的管理模式中政策治理的看法。英哥伦比亚省级公园使用了牟利性的公司来进行公园服务；安达略省级公园使用了半官方手段，以让公园员工直接提供大部分的服务。与五大主要的利益相关者群体（公园员工，参观者，公园里工作的承包商，附近的居民和对公园有兴趣的非政府机构）他们的调查中对两个公园系统里不同群体和不同标准之间发现了重要的差异，并提供了对政策治理标准的更高要求的看法，这更贴近安达略省方法的良好治理。该研究建议在使用标准的政策治理衡量后，比较用牟利性公司提供的公园旅游服务的外包性模式来说，半官方模式会被重要的利益相关者群体看作是更好的选择。该结论对政府对旅游费用和花费上寻求公园资金资助的转型中是有国际化意义的。

Keywords:

• protected areas
• tourism management
• visitor management
• ecotourism
• globalization
• national parks

关键词:

• 保护区域
• 旅游管理
• 参观者管理
• 生态旅游
• 全球化
• 国家公园

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada in support of this project. Francesc Romagosa received a “José Castillejo” postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education to undertake research at the University of Waterloo. Karen Gallant provided assistance with scale development. Three anonymous referees provided insightful advice.

Notes

1. For more details on the methodology of elaboration and realization of surveys, see Buteau-Duitschaever (2009) and Eagles et al. (2010).