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Abstract
Nature-based tourism in protected areas, which is growing worldwide, offers much potential to enhance biodiversity conservation, poverty alleviation, and ultimately sustainable development. Understanding the evolution of protected areas as tourism destinations and the causes and consequences of changing supply and demand elements is an essential step toward sustainably managing tourism in these critical ecosystems. This research applied the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to illustrate and analyze the 30-year evolution of tourism in Wolong Nature Reserve. Being inscribed in UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage programmes, Wolong is a flagship protected area in China. We showed that the Reserve experienced exploration, involvement, and development stages of the TALC before tourism growth was completely halted by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008. We systematically investigated the changes related to the evolution of tourism and identified various internal and external driving forces. We examined the dynamics of politics, economy, and tourism growth that might propel the Reserve through the life cycle and identified significant tourism governance structural changes through the stages. The results have implications for sustainable tourism development in China's protected areas and also contribute to a broader and general understanding of the complex relationships between protected areas, sustainable tourism, and community development.
旅游业在中国旗舰保护区的演变
在保护区内不断增长的全球自然旅游，为加强生物多样性保护、扶贫，以及最终实现可持续发展提供了巨大的潜力。了解保护区作为旅游目的地的原因和改变的供求因素的演变已成为在这些重要的生态系统里向着可持续旅游管理迈进的重要一步。本研究采用的旅游地生命周期（TALC）模型来说明和分析卧龙自然保护区的30年旅游业发展的演变。卧龙是中国的一个旗舰保护区，被列入联合国教科文组织生物圈保护区和世界遗产项目。我们发现，在储备经验丰富的探索、参与和旅游地生命周期的发展阶段之前的旅游业增长，是在2008年汶川大地震时完全停止。我们系统地研究了涉及旅游的演化和识别各种内部外部驱动力的变化。我们研究政治、经济和旅游业增长的动态，可能通过生命周期推动储备，并通过阶段确定重大旅游治理结构的变化。该结果启示了中国保护区的可持续旅游发展，也有利于对保护区、可持续旅游业和社区发展之间的复杂关系建立一个更广泛和普遍的认识。
Acknowledgements
We thank Ke Dong, Jinyan Huang, Mingchong Liu, Jiang Ming, and Weihong Tan for their dedicated efforts in assisting with data collection. We thank Anming Luo, Lun Wang, Pengyan Wang, Xuhui Xia, Jian Yang, and Hemin Zhang at the Wolong Nature Reserve for their great support and sharing of data and opinions related to this study. We thank Dr Andres Viña, Dr Jiaguo Qi, and Dr Gary Roloff, and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 0709717.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that no conflicts of interests exist in relation to the submitted manuscript, and the authors' employers have no financial interest in or financial conflicts with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript.
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Notes on contributors
Wei Liu
Wei Liu is a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. His main research interest is in sustainability transition and sustainability science. His recent research topics include resilience of complex social–ecological systems, adaptation to global changes, impacts of tourism on biodiversity conservation and community development, integrated disaster risk management, and integrated assessment of environmental policies.
Christine A. Vogt
Christine Vogt was a professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University and currently is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Tourism in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. Her research area is tourism communications and the study of people collecting and using information to plan and take vacations. She also studies resident attitudes on tourism and natural resource issues, and survey and evaluation research techniques.
Frank Lupi
Frank Lupi is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics and Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. His research area is environmental and natural resources economics and ecosystem management. His recent research focuses on modeling Michigan fish and wildlife resource demand and value.
Guangming He
Guangming He is an information management analyst at Business-CONNECT of Michigan State University. He received his PhD degree in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. His research areas are ecotourism, GIS application in environmental management, and web-based decision support system.
Zhiyun Ouyang
Zhiyun Ouyang is a professor and director in the State Key Lab of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include ecosystem services, ecosystem assessment and ecological planning, biodiversity conservation, and GIS applications in ecology and environmental research.
Jianguo Liu
Jianguo Liu is Rachel Carson chair in Sustainability, university distinguished professor, and director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University. His research interests include household–environment interactions, complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems, conservation biology, landscape ecology, systems modeling, and the science of sustainability.