Semi-structured interviews and participatory meetings were
designed to elicit knowledge, views, understandings, interpretations,
and experiences of the different stakeholders in relation to
the three objectives (Mason 2002; Valencia-Sandoval et al. 2010).
In this study, targets were identified for each of the three objectives
and a weighting criteria (impact factors and constraints)
were assigned to each target using a participatory technique which
involved obtaining opinions from different users related to the
importance of the criteria for each specific objective (Eastman
2001). The semi-structured interviews were employed to acquire
robust information from a subset of participants including villagers,
tourists, NGO staff, national park personnel, members of the Experts
Committee, and academics. In addition, two participatory meetings
were held that were organised by the School of Business Administration
and Tourism Management, Yunnan University. Over 50
people took part in those meetings representing diverse areas of
interest including ecology, nature conservation, tourism, environmental
protection, county, prefecture, and provincial government
officials, and people from local communities.