Nature education, as an essential social function of protected areas, plays a critical role in promoting the coordinated development of ecological conservation and public engagement. Based on 726 relevant articles indexed in Web of Science and CNKI from 2000 to 2024, this study employs CiteSpace visualization and content analysis to systematically review the research progress and evolving hotspots of nature education in protected areas in globally. The results show that: (1) early research hotspots domestically and internationally primarily focused on the content and forms of nature education, and have gradually shifted toward educational approaches, interpretation, and educational effectiveness, ultimately forming a research framework encompassing spatial planning, resource evaluation, interpretive methods, collaborative mechanisms, and performance assessment. (2) research topics have progressively expanded to multi-stakeholder and multi-type contexts, contributing to the initial development of a relatively systematic knowledge system. (3) due to ongoing construction of China’s protected-area system, limitations in legislation and regulation, and insufficient interdisciplinary integration, domestic research—despite its rapid growth—still falls short of international studies in terms of theoretical development, research scope, and methodological and data diversity. Future research should strengthen the construction of localized theoretical frameworks, broaden research dimensions and depth, enhance the application of technologies and data, and promote interdisciplinary research. This will improve the practical effectiveness of nature education in protected areas and provide theoretical and policy references for their high-quality development.

Environmental education is the foundation for spreading the concept of ecological civilization and an important path to promote public participation in achieving the goal of building a Beautiful China. Internationally, environmental education research is an important interdisciplinary field that has undergone more than half a century of development and accumulated rich research results. However, domestic environmental education is still in the development stage and urgently needs theoretical references from the academic community. Based on this, this study collected 7624 articles published between 1968 and 2024 from the journals collected in Web of Science database. Using bibliometric analysis, keyword coding, and other techniques, a systematic analysis was conducted on the development trends, disciplinary backgrounds, and academic hotspots of international environmental education research. The study primarily covers three aspects: (1) it explored the concept and evolution of international environmental education, sorted out the number of literature, publishing phases, major published journals, hot keywords, geographical distribution, etc. (2) it summarizes three main contents of environmental education research: environmental education philosophy, environmental education implementation, and environmental education effectiveness. (3) three major characteristics of international environmental education research have been extracted. Based on international research and combined with the theoretical and practical needs of China, direction suggestions were proposed for environmental education and its research in China. The research aims to provide a systematic reference for the theoretical construction of environmental education in China, elevate the academic standards and international influence of Chinese environmental education research, strengthen industry-academia-research collaboration in environmental education practices, and promote the achievement of ecological civilization construction goals in China.

This research investigates the spatial evolution characteristics of study tour enterprises and their influencing factors, which can provide a scientific basis for the coordinated planning of the study tour industry and the promotion of regional balanced development, thereby effectively supporting the construction of an education-oriented nation and the implementation of the cultural and tourism integration strategy. Based on 6,763 pieces of data on study tour operators spanning the period from 2013 to 2024, and by employing the methods of Theil index and geospatial analysis, this study explores the spatio-temporal distribution patterns, influencing factors, and spatial heterogeneity of these study tour operators. Major findings include: (1) the number of study tour operators during the research period presents an inverted U-shaped trajectory with a peak in 2021 and subsequent gradual decline. (2) Spatial distribution keeps showing unbalanced nature, with Changsha City remaining the unchallenged core and intra-prefecture disparities having gradually converged over time. The scopes of the standard deviation ellipses show minimal variations, and their centers of gravity have shifted from Xiangtan City to Changsha City. Results of global spatial autocorrelation further confirm a significant positive clustering pattern, forming a high-value agglomeration centered on Changsha. (3) The spatial differentiation of these study tour operators is jointly shaped by multiple factors, including economic strength, policy environment, market demands, social conditions, and resource endowments, among which the explanatory power of two-factor interaction effects is significantly stronger than that of any single factor. (4) The spatial influence scales of different factors vary. Variables such as local government expenditures and tourist numbers exert nearly universal impacts, whereas the proportion of the tertiary industry and the numbers of primary and secondary school students demonstrate distinct localized effects.