Cultural Consonance in Leisure, Leisure Satisfaction, Life Satisfaction, and Self-Rated Health in Urban Taiwan

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study threefold: to determine whether a shared cultural model of the importance of a set of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed in urban Taiwan, the degree to which cultural consonance in leisure mediates the relationship between leisure constraints and leisure satisfaction, and the degree to which leisure satisfaction affects life satisfaction and self-rated health. Results indicate that a cultural model of the importance of leisure activities to a good leisure life existed among sample members. Second, higher levels of self-reported participation in leisure activities that are culturally agreed upon as more important for a good leisure life are more strongly associated with leisure satisfaction than are activities culturally agreed upon as less important. Finally, leisure satisfaction strongly predicts both life satisfaction and self-rated health.

KEYWORDS:

• cultural consonance
• leisure satisfaction
• life satisfaction
• leisure constraints
• self-rated health
• structural equation modeling
• Taiwan

Funding

The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for the financial support for this research under contract NSC96-2415-H-259-002-SS3.

Notes

1 The SWLS has five items in its original form. However, as discussed below, we retained for further analysis only those items from an exploratory factor analysis that had factor loadings equal to or greater than 0.70. The loading for the SWLS item 5, at 0.68, was below that cutoff while each of the remaining items loaded at 0.82 or above. Additionally, item 5 correlated with a scale composed of the remaining four items considerably more poorly (0.64) than was the case for the next worst item (0.80). The leisure satisfaction scale was reduced from eight items to four in a similar manner.

2 Available from the first author.

3 Population figures are from City Population: Taiwan Administrative Division.

4 Descriptions are based primarily on information from city government websites.

5 New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) is the official currency of Taiwan. One NTD = 0.034 U.S. dollar at the time of the study.