Objective  With the steady progress of the construction of national parks in China and the increasing demand for leisure and recreation, the contradiction between recreation and protection of national parks will become more prominent, making it urgent to strengthen the recreation management of national parks. The recreation management of national parks involves the uncertainty of interaction between human and natural environment, which needs to be managed dynamically and adaptively. At present, there have been many empirical researches on adaptive recreation management abroad, while relevant researches in China are still in the preliminary stage of exploration, with insufficient theoretical construction and research depth. In view of this, this research reviews and presents the research stage, content and tendency of adaptive recreation management of national parks abroad, so as to provide reference for future adaptive recreation management of national parks and relevant researches in China.

Methods  The research adopts the CiteSpace knowledge graph analysis method to collect data based on the Web of Science (WoS) core collection database, and searches related literature in the theme of “national park”, “recreation management”, “recreation activities”, “visitor management”, “visitor service”, “wildlife tourism”, “sustainable tourism” or “adaptive management”. According to the WoS core collection database, the earliest time that the correlative literatures can be retrieved is 2003, the search time span is set to be from January 2003 to December 2022, and a total of 8,877 relevant literatures are obtained. The literature data obtained are screened and processed following the principle of removing duplicate literature, personal academic achievements and relevant introductions of scientific research institutions, while deleting such entries as prefaces and article reviews, finally bringing the total number of relevant literature to 6,203, which are used as the basic database for knowledge graph analysis, with keywords therein being subject to clustering analysis by burst terms and timeline graph.

Results  By using the CiteSpace knowledge graph analysis method, this research comprehensively and systematically sorts out and analyzes the research results on the adaptive management of national parks and summarizes the following research characteristics. 1) The research on the adaptive recreation management of national parks abroad can be divided into three stages. The first stage is the stage of practical exploration and theory theoretical germination before 2005. In this stage, research was conducted based on practical problems arising from recreation utilization, and some theories were initially proposed but not perfected. The second stage is the stage of theoretical construction and promotion during the period from 2006 to 2015, during which the theoretical indicator construction and calculation for adaptive recreation management became more clear and the theoretical discussion more in-depth. The third stage is the stage of sustainable development during the period from 2016 to 2022, which focuses on the balance between the environmental impact of national parks and visitor satisfaction for purpose of sustainable development. 2) The research on the adaptive recreation management of foreign national parks involves the four aspects of adaptive management of recreation resources, adaptive management of, recreation environment, adaptive management of tourists and adaptive management of recreation services, which are reflected in the monitoring and evaluation of resources, the dynamic adjustment in response to environmental and climate changes, the monitoring of tourists’ space-time behaviors, and the adaptive management of recreation interpretation and traffic services. 3) The research content of adaptive management of national parks is constantly expanding and deepening, and topics such as community, biodiversity, ecosystem and sustainability have attracted more and more attention. In addition, the multi-stakeholder co-management of recreation adaptation has become an important tendency for future research.

Conclusion  The research on recreation management of national parks abroad starts much earlier than that in China. In the early stage, China’s research on adaptive recreation management mainly drew on the theoretical framework and practical experience of foreign recreation management. In recent years, with the establishment of national parks in China and the increasing demand for recreation, the regulation of recreation utilization and the adaptive recreation management of national parks in China have been concerned and discussed by Chinese scholars. The construction of national parks in China is still in its infancy, and a scientific management system for recreation utilization needs to be established. National parks in China and abroad are different in visitor attributes and behavior characteristics, resident distribution, resource endowment and ecosystem. The adaptive recreation management and research of China’s national parks should not only draw on the valuable experience and theory of adaptive recreation management of national parks abroad, but also adapt to local conditions, select appropriate technical indicators and build corresponding technical systems in combination with the specific regional system of China’s national parks. For national parks in China, it is necessary to implement adaptive recreation management based on the combination of theoretical research and practice with a focus on the proper handling of man-land relationship, so as to ensure the harmonious sustainability of human recreation behavior and ecosystem.