Perception of nature education value and sustainable development pathways of Bibei Yao Village in China

Traditional villages in mountainous regions often face tensions between ecological conservation, cultural heritage continuity, and economic development. This study examines the sustainable development pathway of nature education in Bibei Yao Village in the Nanling Mountains, China, by analyzing differences in perception between villagers and tourists. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed, combining questionnaire surveys ( N = 120, 58 villagers and 62 tourists), semi-structured interviews ( N = 32), participant observation (over 200 h), and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Results reveal a four-dimensional structure of nature education value: cultural heritage ranked highest (M = 4.59), followed by ecological aesthetics (M = 4.12), physical and mental restoration (M = 3.58), and scientific cognition (M = 3.01). A notable culture-science gap emerged, with villagers rating all dimensions lower than tourists. At the micro-individual level, activity satisfaction partially mediated the positive association between value cognition and tourists’ willingness to pay (indirect effect = 0.21, 95% CI [0.14, 0.29]). At the macro-systemic level, interest coordination mediated the association between value cognition and the synergy of ecological protection, cultural heritage, and economic sustainability (indirect effect = 0.42, 95% CI [0.31, 0.54]). These findings suggest that institutional safeguards for equitable benefit sharing may need to precede technological empowerment to mitigate risks of elite capture and cultural commodification. The study provides a context-specific referential framework for living conservation in traditional villages, suggesting that aligning value perception with fair interest coordination may be important for transforming nature education from a conservation tool into a driver of synergistic rural revitalization.