Why public–private cooperation is not prevalent in national parks within centralised countries

ABSTRACT

Shared governance between the public and private sectors can contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of park management and to the fulfilment of its triple mandate of recreation, conservation, and economic pursuits. Nevertheless, park authorities in centralised countries are reluctant to introduce public–private partnerships on a wide scale. This qualitative study is to explore the reasons why public–private cooperation is not widespread within national parks in Vietnam and China. The findings show that both countries have made some sophisticated management choices in relation to public–private cooperation. The adaptive implications are discussed at the end of the paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Park concession
• public–private cooperation
• park management model
• shared governance
• Vietnam
• Phong Nha–Ke Bang National Park
• China
• Zhangjiajie Park
• tourism management
• centralised country

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Chaozhi Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2588-8838

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41471122].