Despite the recent paradigmatic shift in conservation science, protected areas (PAs), which are associated with seminal conservation strategies, remain a key tool for achieving biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, PAs’ effectiveness as conservation measures is undermined by conflicts arising within their socio-ecological systems. Potential reasons for the negative impact of the conflicts include the tendency of researchers to emphasise managerial or behavioural aspects of conservation conflicts, while neglecting to develop theoretical foundations for conflict analysis. We aimed to critically review existing conceptual frameworks applied within the broadly defined field of conservation conflicts and to develop a new more comprehensive framework that better reflects contemporary identified challenges within nature conservation. We particularly proposed and emphasised the integration of a geographical perspective within existing interdisciplinary approaches for the application to PA settings. We systemised and unified conflict-related terminology, assessed the contributions and limitations of existing frameworks and identified critical gaps in the field. These gaps are: inadequate recognition of the spatial aspects of conflict analysis, a lack of consistency between individual-level and community-level frameworks and a lack of systematic linkages among the main structural attributes of conflicts, such as determinants, interests or types of conflicts. We systematically distinguished 26 conflict-related terms, including: conflict frames, images, orientations, factors, categories, issues, potential, or intensity. Our framework covers three major conflict components (determinants, dimensions, levels) and foregrounds the socio-psychological and spatial characteristics of PA conflicts, while enabling systemisation of existing conservation conflict typologies.

Despite changing paradigms in nature conservation, protected areas, such as national parks, remain key tools for nature conservation. Today, protected areas are perceived as socio-ecological systems, therefore using an ecosystem services approach may help in their designation. Here, we focus on the planned Turnicki National Park located in the far eastern part of the Polish Carpathian Mountains and conflict between proponents of the park establishment and local stakeholders. We used an ecosystem services-driven questionnaire survey among local communities to analyze interactions between the perception of ecosystem services and opinions about national parks, and the role of social and economic status in shaping these opinions. We found links between opinions towards national parks and other factors: age, life span in a municipality, level of education, and an average net income. Respondents who perceived benefits from nature were more positive towards national parks in general and the Turnicki National Park specifically; however, those who prioritized provisioning services were more skeptical. Also, we distinguished four Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis models which describe factors shaping opinions on national parks, respectively. The study has shown that the ecosystem services lens perspective can help in exploring the factors crucial while establishing the protected areas in specific social and economic context. The main implication for the study is careful consideration of the role of national park to protect the local environment in harmony with social needs and economic development.

Despite a vast literature conceptualizing a memorable tourism experience, empirical studies overlook the context in which those experiences are produced and compiled into actions that benefit the environment. Accordingly, we need to better understand to what extent the experience of megafauna enclosures strengthens visitors’ overall support for wildlife protection. To close this knowledge gap, we study memorable tourism experiences in the Bison enclosures within Poland to better understand the significance of the environmental context in which the experience induces support for protecting the species. To this end, the study employs both symmetric and asymmetric models to uncover the complexity of individual behavioural paths. The PLS-SEM results confirm the role of memorable experiences in the relationship between attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. In a complimentary manner, the fsQCA results reveal how environmental planners can analyze complex constellations of internal and external factors to elucidate the conditions that generate visitor support for wildlife protection.

Recently, a global trend towards a broader use of secondary data in social sciences has been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. This evoked doubts about the validity of the results unless restrictive assessment procedures are implemented. To address this need in the field of protected area (PA) conflict analysis, we propose a three-fold approach (theory-, method-, and cross-scale simulation-driven) to assess the usefulness of the utilized state register dataset and the indicator analysis methodology for the multi-level recognition of PA conflict determinants. With the ultimate aim to inform case study selection, we processed 187 relevant indicators from the official Statistics Poland register for a Lesser Poland region. We distinguished five types of PA conflict determinants in Lesser Poland (‘urbanity’, ‘agriculture’, ‘tourism’, ‘small-scale entrepreneurship’, and ‘sprawl’) and respective groups of 15 clusters comprising local-level units. For one cluster, we juxtaposed the obtained results with secondary data from another source (Internet content) and for a specific PA (Tatra National Park). Although the reported conflict issues corresponded to the indicator-derived descriptors of the cluster, in the theory-driven phase of the assessment, the state register failed to address the key prerequisites of PA conflicts. We have demonstrated that, in crisis conditions such as COVID-19, the proposed method can serve as a proxy for a multi-level recognition of PA conflict potentials, provided that it synthesises the results of different methodological approaches, followed by in-person interviews in the selected case studies.