Wildlife damage pushes park residents toward tourism only when opportunity feels real

Wildlife damage around China’s Wuyishan National Park appears to nudge residents toward tourism as a livelihood alternative, but only under specific psychological conditions. A survey of 513 people living in and around the Wuyishan City section of the park found that residents who perceived greater wildlife damage also reported stronger threat appraisals of their traditional livelihoods. That threat appraisal, in turn, was linked to stronger intentions to shift household income toward tourism. The study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, draws on protection motivation theory to explain how environmental pressure translates into livelihood decisions.

Protection motivation theory, originally developed to explain health behavior, proposes that people respond to threats through two parallel mental appraisals. The first is threat appraisal, which weighs how severe and likely a danger is. The second is coping appraisal, which assesses whether a recommended response will actually work and whether the person is capable of carrying it out. The researchers applied this framework to livelihood decisions, treating wildlife damage as the threat and tourism as the recommended response. They separated coping appraisal into two distinct beliefs: perceived tourism adaptive efficacy, meaning the belief that tourism is a workable and useful livelihood alternative for the community, and tourism self-efficacy, meaning an individual’s confidence in their own ability to participate in tourism activities.

The survey data showed a clear pattern on the threat side. Greater perceived wildlife damage was associated with stronger threat appraisal of traditional livelihoods such as farming or forest-based income. Residents who perceived greater livelihood threat also reported stronger transition intentions and were more likely to view tourism as a workable livelihood alternative. This suggests that the damage itself does not directly produce a decision to change livelihoods; instead, it operates through the resident’s subjective evaluation of how threatened their current income has become.

The coping side of the model produced a more nuanced result. Both perceived tourism adaptive efficacy and tourism self-efficacy were positively related to transition intention. In other words, residents were more inclined to consider tourism when they believed it could work for their community and when they believed they personally could do it. However, livelihood threat showed no clear relationship with tourism self-efficacy. Feeling threatened by wildlife damage made residents see tourism as more useful and feasible, but it did not make them feel more confident in their own abilities to run a guesthouse, guide visitors, or sell services to tourists.

This dissociation matters because it reveals a gap between opportunity recognition and capability perception. The threat of wildlife damage appears to open a door in residents’ minds, making tourism seem like a viable alternative, yet it leaves untouched the question of whether they could actually walk through that door. The authors suggest that policies aimed at encouraging livelihood diversification in national park communities may therefore need to combine the creation of tourism opportunities with training, skills development, and other forms of support that strengthen residents’ capacity to participate.

The study also examined perceived tourism development opportunity as a moderator, testing whether the broader local context changes how threat translates into coping beliefs. Here again the two efficacy beliefs behaved differently. When residents perceived greater tourism opportunities in their area, the positive relationship between livelihood threat and adaptive efficacy was stronger, as was the corresponding indirect relationship with transition intention. In contrast, perceived opportunity made little difference to the relationship involving self-efficacy. The local tourism environment appears to amplify how useful and feasible tourism seems to threatened residents, but it does not boost their personal sense of capability.

The questionnaire-based design captures associations at a single point in time and cannot establish causal direction. It is possible that residents who already lean toward tourism perceive their wildlife losses as more threatening, or that the relationships run in both directions. The findings are specific to residents in and around the Wuyishan City section of Wuyishan National Park and may not generalize to other protected areas with different tourism markets, different wildlife, or different household economies. The authors also note that all claims expressed in the article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations or the publisher.

For conservation policy, the results carry a practical implication. Simply protecting wildlife or compensating for damage may not be enough to guide livelihood transitions, because the psychological pathway from damage to intention runs through both threat and coping appraisals. If residents perceive strong threat but lack confidence in their own tourism skills, the intention to transition may stall. Programs that simultaneously signal real tourism opportunities and build individual capacity, through training or skills development, could address both halves of the coping appraisal. The study distinguishes for the first time in this setting between the belief that tourism works and the belief that one can do it, showing that wildlife pressure strengthens the former without touching the latter.

Subject of Research: How wildlife damage and psychological appraisals shape national park residents' intentions to transition household livelihoods toward tourism in China.

Article Title: When wildlife damage threatens livelihoods: why national park residents consider a transition to tourism

Article References: Zheng, B., Cai, D., & Qi, X. (2026). When wildlife damage threatens livelihoods: why national park residents consider a transition to tourism. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 14, 1986333. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2026.1986333

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2026.1986333

Keywords: wildlife damage, livelihood transition, protection motivation theory, threat appraisal, tourism adaptive efficacy, tourism self-efficacy, Wuyishan National Park, human-wildlife conflict, national park communities, China, conservation, questionnaire survey