Objectives The establishment of national parks has enhanced the intensity of ecological protection, and the livelihood pressures of surrounding households have increased sharply. As a policy tool to balance the contradiction between ecological protection and economic development, the ecological protection compensation mechanism has great significance for the sustainable development of national park communities.

Methods Taking the households within and surrounding Wuyishan National Park as the research subject, this paper established an index system of households' livelihood resilience, and investigated the impact of the ecological protection compensation on the livelihood resilience of local households and its mechanism of action.

Results Ecological protection compensation policies exerted a significant influence on the household livelihood resilience, with this impact exhibiting both group-specific and location-specific variations. "Blood transfusion" compensation proved effective in providing short-term livelihood security for low-income groups, mainly enhancing their resilience by increasing the proportion of property income within household earnings. "Hematogenic" compensation significantly enhanced the livelihood resilience of middle-to-high-income groups, primarily by diversifying household income streams, increasing the proportion of wage income, and reducing the proportion of transfer income.

Conclusions This paper proposed to formulate differentiated policies for ecological protection compensation of national parks, and implement precise compensation for households in different groups and different locations. Concurrently, the precision and sustainability of policies should be strengthened to promote the overall improvement of the household livelihood resilience, thereby providing rubost support for the sustainable development of national park communities.