With the vigorous development of urbanization and rural tourism, the landscape of villages and towns has undergone tremendous changes under the influence of policies and industries. In order to avoid irreversible changes in the local heritage landscape and promote local sustainable development, it is necessary to strengthen the attention and research on the rural recreation landscape. This research examines the value of rural landscape recreation by applying the choice experiment method (CEM) to a suburban area in Sichuan, China. Mixed logit models were adopted in examining tourists’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for rural landscape improvement and preference heterogeneity. An assessment of the rural landscape’s recreational value was made using the compensating surplus calculation method. Results reported are of four important landscape elements: ecological environment, rural life and associated productive landscape, rural housing, and service landscape, ranked by tourists from high-to-low. A major finding of the research is that an increase in rural tourism is dependent upon improvements to landscape elements. The results of this research can provide policymakers with valuable information necessary to develop a successful plan to attract and increase tourism in rural areas of China.

National parks have been adopted for over a century to enhance the protection of valued natural landscapes in countries worldwide. For decades, China has emphasized the importance of economic growth over ecological health to the detriment of its protected areas. After decades of environmental degradation, dramatic loss of biodiversity, and increasing pressure from the public to improve and protect natural landscapes, China’s central government recently proposed the establishment of a pilot national park system to address these issues. This study provides an overview of the development of selected conventional protected areas (CPAs) and the ten newly established pilot national parks (PNPs). A literature review was conducted to synthesize the significant findings from previous studies, and group workshops were conducted to integrate expert knowledge. A qualitative analysis was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot national park system. The results of this study reveal that the PNP system could be a potential solution to the two outstanding issues facing CPAs, namely the economic prioritization over social and ecological considerations that causes massive ecological degradation, and the conflicting, overlapping, and inconsistent administrative and institutional structures that result in serious inefficiencies and conflicts.

In the process of establishing a protected area system centered on national parks, China’s policies inevitably impact the traditional livelihoods of original community residents, often leading to a diminished sense of social justice. Tourism, serving as a critical bridge between realizing the value of national parks’ ecological products and transitioning community livelihoods, is pivotal for fostering coordination between conservation efforts and community support for tourism. This coordination is essential for enhancing the community’s perception of social justice and achieving the sustainable development goals of national parks. This study aims to investigate the antecedents influencing community willingness to support tourism in national parks. Data were collected from 326 original residents of Wuyishan National Park in China and analyzed using a dual-stage approach that combines Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The findings indicate that all three dimensions of perceived justice—distributive, procedural, and interactional—significantly and positively influence the community’s willingness to support tourism. Community tourism empowerment mediates the relationship between these three dimensions of perceived justice and the support for tourism development. The contrasting results between PLS-SEM and ANN in Model A reveal the complex nature of how perceptions of fairness facilitate community empowerment.

China is the largest developing country in the world and a well-known agricultural country. China's urbanization is a subject of great interest, one that has attracted the attention of people throughout the world. Whereas a handful of studies have assessed various aspects of urbanization (urban expansion, urban transition, urban-rural relationships, the spatial changes in urban and rural areas, motivations for sustaining rural places), little is known of how to retain the indigenous character of rural areas in terms of landscape design. In this paper, the authors set out to contribute to this significant gap. They used Chengdu City and Five Golden Flowers (FGF) village in Chengdu's suburbs as case studies. A detailed description of the application of Ebenezer Howard's Garden City vision in Chengdu City was made; the Garden City vision was the key premise for FGF's ecotourism industry and successful conservation of landscapes with indigenous character. An analysis of the post-ecotourism landscape in FGF was accomplished using a typology method. Finally a set of landscape design methods for retaining indigenous character was proposed. The main conclusion of this paper was as follows: rural ecotourism can contribute to maintaining the indigenous character of rapidly urbanizing rural landscapes with the use of appropriate inheritance and renovation ways. The findings here may provide useful information for decision making by urban planners and policy-makers.