China’s policy of subsidies and rewards for grassland ecological protection (PSRGEP) aims to maintain the ecological function of grasslands and increase the income of herder households. Since 2011, the Chinese government has invested more than 150 billion yuan in this policy, making it currently the largest grassland ecological compensation project in China. Based on a survey of 203 herder households in Xin Barag Left Banner, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, this study used the Lorenz curve and Gini index to describe the imbalance in the distribution of compensation funds. Then, the integrated livelihood capital scores before compensation were used as a baseline. The changes in ranking and standard deviation of the scores after receiving compensation funds were analysed to draw a conclusion about the impact on the income gap between herder households. Finally, we described the absolute income gap through a group comparison. The results show that the distribution of compensation funds is unbalanced (Gini index is 0.46). According to the order of compensation funds from high to low, the top 20% of sample herder households received 49% of the total funds. Given the unbalanced distribution, households with better family economic conditions received more compensation funds. After receiving the compensation funds, the change in the ranking of the household’s livelihood capital integrated score was small, but the standard deviation increased from 0.1697 to 0.1734, and the Gini index of the households’ capital integrated scores decreased from 0.35 to 0.34 (the coefficient of variation decreased from 0.66 to 0.63). The group with the highest integrated livelihood capital score received 3.6 times the compensation funds of the group with the lowest score. As a result, under the promotion of PSRGEP, the local absolute income gap has widened, but the relative income gap has reduced. This study evaluated the current distribution of compensation funds for PSRGEP, which could provide a scientific basis for managers to optimize the fund distribution in the future.

The Chinese government has already proposed to build a nature protected area system composed mainly of national parks and encourages the development of concession operations in national parks. The establishment of a long-term ecological compensation mechanism under the concession mode is of great significance to promoting the harmonious development of man and nature in national parks. This paper selects the Pilot Programs for Shennongjia National Park System (PPSNPS) as the research area and constructs a long-term ecological compensation mechanism under the concession model of tourism back-feeding communities in PPSNPS. Through the questionnaire survey (516 valid questionnaires in 2018), based on the Travel Cost Interval Analysis (TCIA) and Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), the landscape value of the study area is monetized. Combined with the investment cost of concession enterprises, we construct the quantitative distribution ratio of the ecological compensation standard and get the amount of ecological compensation. On this basis, a long-term ecological compensation scheme is constructed. This specific scheme content is as below: on the one hand, Shennongjia National Park Administration (SNPA) is the beneficiary of ecological compensation, and the Shennong Tourism Investment Group Co, Ltd. (STIC) is the provider of ecological compensation; on the other hand, the travel tickets income is the only source of ecological compensation funds (back-feeding funds). Specifically, the landscape value of PPSNPS in 2018 was 604,230.3 × 10⁴ yuan, the input cost of STIC was 140,696 × 10⁴ yuan, the income after deducting tax from tourism tickets was 15,200 × 10⁴ yuan, and the distribution ratio of back-feeding funds is 1:4.29 with the back-feeding funds provided to SNPA from STIC of 12,326.65 × 10⁴ yuan. Through this paper, we know that landscape value monetization can provide ideas for quantitative accounting of the ecological compensation standard for national park tourism concession. In the future, this subject needs more theoretical and practical research on multiple long-term ecological compensation mechanisms.