Research overview: tourism benefits and their effect on tolerance for big cats

This overview synthesises research on whether wildlife-tourism revenue increases local tolerance for big cats by offsetting conflict costs. It reviews cases from jaguar tourism in the Pantanal, lion tourism in East Africa, and snow leopard and puma tourism, examining how benefits, jobs, community funds, direct payments, shape attitudes. The literature finds tourism can build tolerance when benefits are tangible, fairly distributed, and clearly linked to predator presence, but may fail when gains are captured by elites or outsiders while losses fall on others. The survey frames tourism as a potentially powerful tolerance-building mechanism whose success hinges on equitable benefit-sharing and a credible connection in residents' minds between living predators and local prosperity.