Emerging Governance Approaches for Tourism in the Protected Areas of China

This paper examines the recent evolution in the governance of protected area tourism in China. China now sees cooperation in the form of public-private partnerships occurring between authorized private tourism enterprises in various organizational forms and the public managers from specific portfolio departments of governments at different levels. Three types of governance models are visible: the Leasing Model, the Non-listed Share-holding Model, and the Public-listed Share-holding Model. Theories of corporate governance were applied to these models to analyze the internal and external mechanisms of supervision and incentives for both the government agencies and the authorized tourism enterprises for nature-based tourism operations. The Principal-Agent problem and the supervision mechanism are the focus of the analysis. The emerging governance approaches for tourism in protected areas of China are all theoretically viable, as explained by the theory of property rights and corporate governance, and practically viable as elaborated in the cases of the three types of governance models summarized in this paper.