Abstract: Regional ecotourism cooperation provides an institutional guarantee that brings together ecological resources development, protection of natural ecologies and regional economic growth, and also is one of the keys to improve the level of China’s ecotourism development. China’s administrative regions are divided by large areas of natural geography, such as vast tracts of land, mountainous areas and bodies of water. Given the structure of China’s administrative system, administrative areas make independent and uncoordinated decisions concerning the use of ecological resources, resulting in low-level ecotourism products and redundant construction projects undertaken by local governments, limiting the further improvement of China's ecotourism level. Therefore, it is necessary to construct a spatial system and a model of regional ecotourism cooperation in line with China's national conditions. This paper adopts an inductive deductive method analyze systematically the connotations and obstacles of China’s regional ecotourism cooperation, and proposes space development and cooperative model. Research shows that the inescapable choice is cross-regional ecotourism cooperation based on natural zonality, cultural similarity, coordinated regional economic development and policy integration. The key existing obstacles include administrative barriers, lack of motivation to cooperate and loose cooperation patterns. Future regional ecotourism cooperation should define the thematic function area, cooperation zones, scenic roads and ecotourist routes, to establish the cross-regional integration development system and realize systematic optimization. This study is of theoretical value for the development of regional ecotourism cooperation and the construction of spatial systems in China.

Key words: China, cross-regional ecotourism cooperation, development model, influence factors