Governance paradox: implications from Japan’s national parks for managing complex protected areas

Herein, we discuss the governance implications for emerging protected areas with complexity in the 2020s by analyzing public–private partnership frameworks in Japan’s national parks. First, we summarize previous literature to elucidate the characteristics of Japan’s national park management as “weak government” represented by a lack of administrative resources and weak regulatory power. Second, we identify the weak implementation of two legal public–private partnership frameworks from questionnaires and interviews: the Park Management Organization and the Scenic Area Protection Agreement. We discuss the high transaction costs and lack of sufficient benefits to the private sector as the main reasons behind weak implementation. We identify this mismatch as a “governance paradox” and argue that sufficient administrative support and institutional design are indispensable for active partnership implementation.