Assessment of the immigration effect and choice of development pattern for scenic areas:a case study of Wuyi Mountain, China

Mountainous regions face a series of conflicts between the natural resources conservation and the economic development, especially in protected areas, where are the home to some of the poorest people in the world. In China, the Protected Areas Authorities (such as Protected Areas Authorities of Wuyi Mountain) transferred the mountainous people out of the protected areas. We found that it is not a good approach of immigration project, as far as economic and ecological effect is concerned. Although remote and majestic beauty attracted many tourists, mass tourism is not a good approach to solve the development problem in mountainous areas because it can not provide enough opportunities to make local people live a comfortable life, and the high volume of tourists indicates that the resources face significant threats. Because many landscapes are run by private enterprises, local residents and gov-ernment only get limited benefits. Although ecotourism principles expatiate on economic development and resources conservation, local people income and tourists feelings, it has discordance between the theory and the practice. Therefore, the term of "integrated ecotourism" was coined in the paper based on the ecotourism theory. Integrated ecotourism means a broadly tourism resources and pendulum spatial pattern which will come into being with the movement of local people and tourists from protected areas to the nearby town or city; and it also tries to solve the property right conflict of mountain land between the local people and the private enterprises according to property right theory.