Tourism mitigating human–wildlife conflict in protected areas: a “justice of space” perspective

Human–wildlife conflict generates spatial injustice in communities adjacent to protected areas. Although tourism is often promoted as a mitigation strategy, relevant research largely operates within a justice in space perspective, emphasizing compensation and benefit distribution within static spatial arrangements. Existing research pays insufficient attention to how space itself, as a productive set of material and social relations, can alleviate injustice. Addressing this gap, this study adopts a justice of space perspective to examine how tourism-mediated spatial restructuring mitigates, and may also reproduce, injustice in human–wildlife conflict. Drawing on two rounds of fieldwork on human–elephant conflict in Xishuangbanna, China, this study combines non-participant observation with semi-structured interviews with 35 participants selected through purposive and snowball sampling. The findings identify three socio-spatial mechanisms: (1) producing secured space that reallocates risk and access to security through fencing, monitoring, and safety training; (2) remaking livelihood space through scenic-area employment, flexible local employment, and elephant-oriented rural production; and (3) capitalizing on spatial proximity to commercial opportunities to enhance local capability. Nevertheless, tourism-related spatial restructuring carries inherent limitations, including potential risks to ecological security, selective community participation, and constrained entrepreneurial opportunities. This study demonstrates that spatial transformation constitutes an important pathway through which tourism may mitigate human–wildlife conflict and produce justice, extending previous research beyond its predominantly economic focus.