Abstract:
The awareness and adaptation willingness of indigenous people in national parks and their surrounding areas towards wildlife-caused conflicts are the key factors determining the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation and the quality of national park construction. However, up to now, there have been no academic achievements that incorporate national parks and their adjacent regions into the same research framework. In response to this research gap, this study selects the Protection and Development Belt Around Wuyishan National Park (hereinafter referred to as Wuyi PDB) as the research object. By distributing and collecting 387 valid questionnaires and using the ordered multi-class logistic regression analysis method, it deeply explores the influence mechanism of indigenous people′s perceptions of wildlife-caused conflicts on their adaptation intention. The research findings are multifaceted. Firstly, 78.6% of the indigenous people have heard of or directly experienced wildlife-caused conflicts and their crops have all suffered varying degrees of damage. Regarding the root causes of these conflicts, as many as 91.0% of the indigenous people believe that the increase in the number of wild animals is the core trigger, while 77.8% of the indigenous people point out that the food preference of wild animals is another major contributing factor. Secondly, in the face of wildlife-caused conflicts, the overall attitude of the indigenous people towards response tends to be negative. Specifically, 65.9% of the indigenous people are unwilling to participate in the wildlife-caused conflicts loss insurance program, and 76.5% of the indigenous people refuse to pay the relevant protection fees. In contrast, only 22.5% of the indigenous people are willing to participate in community co-management work and 6.2% of the indigenous people actively engage in wildlife protection. Thirdly, several factors are confirmed to have a significant impact on the adaptation willingness of indigenous people, including family livelihood characteristics, past experiences related to wild animals, as well as the degree of understanding and satisfaction of indigenous people with current control measures. Based on the above research conclusions, this paper puts forward a series of policy suggestions, aiming to safeguard the core interests of indigenous people and promote harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Ultimately, it is expected that the research results can provide useful references for resolving wildlife-caused conflicts in nature reserves and their peripheral areas and facilitate more effective ecological protection and management system.