Abstract:

Public participation is an attempt by development partners to broadly consult and involve the public as to where projects should be situated. The clear trend is toward broader and more frequent public involvement and collaboration for national park governance as public participation has been applied in the management of protected areas for several decades. Public participation in the Chinese protected area system presents a passive and non-standardized situation. The preliminary model of public participation in China’s national parks is presented in this paper through synthesizing the background of the construction of China’s national park system. Results obtained in this research indicate that, according to the degree of public participation, there could be four types of public participation in China’s national parks, which include information feedback, consultation, agreement and partnerships. The impacts of our obtained results provide references for a pilot project involving the construction of China’s national park system.

Key words: national park, protected area, public participation, stakeholders, national park governance