The Intention of Community Participation in the Qilian Mountain National Park Policy Pilot

Abstract

As a management strategy, community participation is to implement the coordinated development of communities and protected areas. In recent years, the development of China’s national parks has faced many challenges related to human and environmental constraints. Community participation plays an essential role in solving such issues. As one of the critical indicators to test community participation, community residents’ willingness to participate significantly impacts community participation in constructing national parks. As such, this study was conducted using the extended model of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the structural equation model. Taking the Tianzhu county and Sunan Yugu county as examples, and based on 230 valid questionnaires, we investigated the impacts of the Qilian Mountain National Park System Pilot Area on community residents’ willingness to participate and provided relevant suggestions for amendments. The results indicated that, for the Qilian Mountain National Park System Pilot Area, behavioral attitude, subjective norms, and perceptual behavior control positively impacted the participation intention of community residents. At the same time, the variables mentioned above positively impacted the implementation of the participation intention of community residents. Specifically, the order of impacts is as follows: perceptual behavior control (path coefficient = 0.89) > participation behavior attitude (path coefficient = 0.68) > related impact system (path coefficient = 0.41) > subjective norms (path coefficient = 0.38). According to the results, we put forward three suggestions: (1) providing relevant instructions and guidance on various methods to ensure that the pilot policies on the construction of national parks can form a positive relationship with the participation intentions of the community residents; (2) making full use of the function of perceptual behavior control, so the subjective initiative of community residents can be maximized, thereby enhancing the willingness of community residents to participate in constructing national parks; and (3) strengthening the impacts of subjective norms, enhancing the soft culture of national park communities’ participation, reshaping the community cultural landscapes with the goal of constructing national parks, and establishing community residents’ sense of honor as the builders of national parks.