Does ecotourism influence community support for natural resource regulation? Evidence from giant panda nature reserves in China

Ecotourism is a crucial means of reconciling the conflict between nature reserves and the livelihoods of local communities. However, its development also poses certain challenges to the ecological protection of these reserves. This paper explores the impact of ecotourism development in nature reserves on residents’ attitudes toward natural resource regulation policies. Based on survey data from 808 households in China’s giant panda nature reserves, this study uses a Conditional Mixed Process -based recursive simultaneous equations model and Generalized Continuation-Ratio Models to examine this relationship. The results show that ecotourism significantly decreases the likelihood of community residents supporting stronger natural resource regulation and increases the possibility of them supporting a reduction in current regulation intensity. The type of ecotourism is a more significant influencing factor than scale or income. Notably, in reserves with higher tourist traffic and more developed infrastructure, the negative impact of ecotourism is stronger. Furthermore, improving education, increasing non-farm employment, and expanding internet access can effectively alleviate these negative impacts, while government financial support shows mixed effects. Finally, ecotourism significantly increases the amount of non-timber forest products collected by households, with a larger increase in non-timber forest products collected for sale than for personal use. This study contributes to the literature by linking ecotourism participation and residents’ regulatory attitudes, and provides practical implications for designing differentiated ecotourism policies and community-based resource regulation strategies in nature reserves.