Tourism Regulation On National Parks

The nature heritage is valuable gift from Nature for human being, and it is an important responsibility for the man to keep its sustainable development in the process of civilization. The National Park Model (NPM) for nature heritage management practiced in some countries is a virtual model worth learning for China. It is the attributes of public good for the nature heritages and Chinese institutional arrangement that determine the urgency of tourism regulation study. The economy and society of China enter into a transition stage. Therefore, it has significantly theoretical and practical meaning to reveal the relevance between NPM and the realization of recreational civilization, summarize the basic rules and experience of tourism regulation on national parks (TRNP), explore the feasibility to achieve a unified NPM for the nature heritage sites in China.National park is a public nature heritage park of national significance, set aside for people's welfare and enjoyment. All of its construction, operation and maintenance have well-ground theories basis. In the Politics and Welfare Economics academics, there emerge a group of welfarism recreationists who consider public recreation supply as basic pursue and logic cornerstone, maintain that public recreational citizenship should be safeguarded, the growth of public leisure supply is a response for the recreational citizenship, and a group of neo-liberalists who criticize welfarists and contend for the diversified market supply for recreation. Both of welfarism recreationists and neo-liberal recreationists focus on the relevance between public recreation supply and social policies. As a part of public policies, national park is guarantee and platform for the space supply of recreational citizenship.During eco-civilization stage, the construction of national park has an explicit orientation towards ethnic politics. Human being has taken great advances on the ethnics of man-land relationship which has evolved from Social Contract Theory to the Theory of Nature Rights which accentuates the relationship between man and nature. In such sense, national park is a constructed space to realize the nature rights. Public Philosophy, a theory with the aim to realize the public value, provides the basis for eco-environment maintenance and public recreation to be the issues of public agenda, supports the national park entering into the field of public policies. The Ecological Politics emphasizing the dependence between politics and eco-protection, establish theoretically political significance for eco-protection, justification of eco-civilization, and lay theoretical foundation for creation of national parks. The Nature Capital Theory of Resource Economics and Ecological Service Theory of Environmental Ecology catering to the orientation of ethnic politics, provide theoretical basis for the operation of national parks. Moreover, Theory of Market Failure, Theory of Government Regulation, Theory of Institutional Ethnics and Theory of Sustainable Development are the basis for TRNP, and support the TRNP to be a theoretical method to keep the sustainability of nature heritages.Since the origin of National Park Idea (NPI) in 1870s, more and more countries accepted the idea as for its positive roles in respecting "nature rights", realizing "recreation citizenship", activating native cohesion, and etc. A National Park Move has spread over 150 countries and regions which creating various kinds of national parks. In the world, the number of protected areas has been increasing greatly with different regions characteristic by different types. The human's eco-protection and recreation demand on nature space is the internal driving force for the development of NPI, and the policy supports from national governments may be the boosting force for the maintenance of NPI. The exploration on spatial expansion indicates three extinct developing stages:embryonic stage, developing stage and prosperous stage. As for the different background, there are various originating paths for national parks, such as Native Identity-driven Model exampled by America and Canada, Nature Recreation-driven Model by United Kingdom and Germany, Landscape and Environment Protection-driven Model by Australian and Japan, and Wildlife Protection-driven Model by East African and South Africa.The growth and spatial distribution of national parks is influenced by multiple factors, including environment concern, value orientation for public, tourism development, economy development, and etc. It's worth noting that the valuation for public use is the key factors for the two kinds of countries. The study explores the changes and inclination of value orientation for tourism development in the world, and finds that there exists a two-tracked value orientation, that is, strict regulations on the tourism development of heritage-based scenic spots so as to protect resources and maintain the sustainable tourism development and perfectly competitive market mechanism for the common non-monopoly tourist resources with the goal of economic gains. Thanks to the public orientation, national parks, as the power space for public service, have substantial foundation and promising future.The TRNP belongs to the tourism regulation on nature heritage. The attribute of "public goods" for the national park determines that tourism regulation can decrease negative external effect of environment, alternative effect, cross subsidization and information asymmetry. In essence, the TRNP is a protection regulation with the dependence on civil right as one of main objectives, a direct tourism regulation with the emphasis on active role of government, a comprehensive regulation with social regulation as predominance, a strengthen regulation but not deregulation. Based on the effort of western countries, IUCN and other relevant international organizations, who attaching great importance to experience summary on national parks, it's very common to analyze the NPM from two aspects, that is, management and governance. Objective management and effective governance are the two key indices for judging the performance of national parks. The IUCN Matrix, a wonderful tool, has come into being based on the management and governance category.The management and governance of national parks have complicated relationship with economic regulation, social regulation and their branched regulations. Therefore, it's necessary to presents a framework for TRNP. Under the support from macro-policies, the TRNP contains two aspects (i.e., management and governance), three segments (i.e., establishment of agency, launch of regulation, feedback and supervision). The main contents of TRNP include property regulation and entrance regulation towards "effective governance", price regulation, quantity and quality regulation, environment regulation, education regulation, safety regulation and information disclosure towards "objective management".Improved management, strengthened law-set, various finance supports have provided good bases for TRNP. However, there also exist many disadvantages such as the inconsistence among tourism regulation on difference scales, low efficiency of management as the result of decentralization and short supply finance etc. As countries with different governance type may adopt different regulation models, among which the Government-centralized Model with American as example, the Community Co-management Model with Australian as case, and the Mixed Governance Model exampled by Japan are three main types.China has the abundant and various nature heritage resources. The initial successes have been achieved in national label movement for nature heritage sites, pertinent legislation and protection planning. However, the management of nature heritage has been neglected public interest for a long time, the separated administration on heritage sites increased the possibility of regulation failure and the legislation also needs to be perfected. As the result, the performance of tourism regulation in the nature heritages in China is limited. Even for the new national park pilot such as Tangwang River national park programme, and the national park programme for Yunnan province, there existed lots of knotty problems, such as marketization-orientation and departmentism. The regulation on nature-based heritage sites in China is some of a weak regulation with the characteristic of unstable macro-policy support, disunified knowledge on management objective, effective governance and incomplete regulation progress, etc. In a word, an unclear property regulation, an entrance regulation lack of strong legislation are the main cautions for ineffective governance of Chinese nature-based heritage sites; meanwhile, in the process of price regulation, quality and quantity regulation, education regulation and environment regulation, the games among central and local government, administration department and local government, local enterprises and government lead to the hunting for "ticket economy" in heritage-based tourist destinations, and the loss of public value for nature heritages.Accordingly, for the purpose of improving the nature heritage management, pushing on the realization of recreational citizenship, alleviating the conflict between diminishing of nature recreational space and increasing of civil recreational needs, it's necessary for China to implant the NPM for nature heritage governance. In addition, it's feasible for China to implement the Model because of diversified resources, increasing requirement on public nature recreation, welfare orientation for tourism development, state-owned property rights structure. To construct national park "start from scratch" and adopt a state-governed model are institutional innovation. To build a TRNP system with the aim of maintaining biological diversity and ecosystem integrity, providing public recreational services is a mechanism innovation for realizing the aim of national parks and advancing effective governance. All of these would advance the perfectness and development of tourism regulation on nature heritage sites with Chinese characteristics.