With the diversified development of nature reserves and the increasing of tourism demand, the managers of nature reserves are facing with the dual pressure of protecting the ecological environment and meeting the needs of recreation, which makes the managers need more information to make decisions. It is adopted multinomial logit model, random parameter logit model and latent class model to conduct a choice experiment on the preference of tourists among management priorities that may conflict in Zhalong national nature reserve of northeast China. A set of assumed nature reserve attributes and levels is created, including ‘biodiversity’, ‘expected number of visitors’, ‘environmental education facilities’ and ‘entrance fee’. The purpose is to reveal how tourists evaluate the different management attributes of nature reserves, as well as the marginal willingness to pay and preference for each attribute. Based on this information, we develop effective guidelines for the management of nature reserves. The results show that the tourists are most concerned about biodiversity and attach more importance to ecological attribute than recreational attribute. Therefore, reserve managers should first maintain and improve biodiversity and ecological environment, and then develop recreational services with environmental education function without destroying the environment. Tourists' willingness to pay for ‘expected number of visitors’ is negative, which leads to the loss of welfare, indicating that the tourists prefer a quiet environment with few people when visiting the nature reserve and other ecological tourism scenic spots. It is also found that the tourists can be divided into two groups, eco-friendly (67.44%) and price-sensitive (32.56%). The tourists in different groups have different preferences for visiting the nature reserve, which reveals the origin of preference heterogeneity. Women and younger respondents are more ecologically friendly, while men and older respondents are more price sensitive. Respondents' willingness to pay for the management attributes of nature reserves is following the order of ‘biodiversity’, ‘environmental education facilities’, and ‘expected number of visitors’ from high to low with 3.41 yuan, 2.18 yuan and -0.32 yuan respectively. Among the four selected management scenarios, the average willingness to pay for the best plan is 7.78 yuan per person, and the total annual average willingness to pay for improving Zhalong national nature reserve is 3.112 million yuan. The average annual willingness to pay for the improvement of ecological attributes and entertainment attributes is 1.368 million yuan and 0.872 million yuan respectively. From the management perspective of nature reserves, clear information can be obtained that improving the ecological and recreational attributes is a valuable plan for future development. The contribution of this paper is to extend the description of one attribute value to the study covering multiple management attributes and provide more specific insights to the trade-offs between ecology and recreation in nature reserve management.