Is expectation disconfirmation related to stakeholder satisfaction and willingness to engage in national parks? A case study of Shennongjia National Park in China

As the construction of national parks progresses, core stakeholders evaluate the gap between their actual outcomes and their psychological expectations across economic, social, cultural, and ecological dimensions. Drawing on expectation disconfirmation theory, this study conceptualizes this cognitive gap as expectation disconfirmation, defined from a subjective perspective as the extent to which stakeholders' psychological expectations remain unmet, reflected in the degree of negative disconfirmation. This study, based on the pilot area of Shennongjia National Park in Hubei Province, China, employs structural equation modeling to systematically examine the direct and indirect pathways among three categories of core stakeholders (N = 605). The analysis focuses on economic expectation disconfirmation (EED), social expectation disconfirmation (SED), cultural expectation disconfirmation (CED), and ecological expectation disconfirmation (EcED), and their relationships with stakeholder satisfaction and participation intention. The results indicate that (1) During the construction of the national park, different types of stakeholders exhibit both shared and distinct patterns of expectation disconfirmation. Among these, EED and SED consistently merged as the primary dimensions prioritized across groups. (2) CED varied significantly among stakeholder groups, with notable differences in its influence on satisfaction and participation intention. Specifically, for land users, the pathway linking CED to satisfaction and participation intention was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). In contrast, for individual operators and government officials, CED showed a significant indirect pathway association with participation intention through satisfaction (p < 0.05). (3) For land users, ED, SED, and EcED all exhibited significant negative associations with lower levels of satisfaction and weaker participation intention. Among individual operators and government officials, the relationship between expectation disconfirmation and participation intention is primarily mediated by satisfaction, underscoring its crucial role in shaping stakeholder engagement. (4) Furthermore, there was a significant positive pathway association between satisfaction and participation intention (p < 0.01). Within the cross-sectional research framework, the findings indicate a systematic relationship among the levels of expectation disconfirmation of different stakeholders, satisfaction, and participation intention, providing empirical insights into exploring stakeholder participation mechanisms in national park community governance.