Serious Leisure and Recreation Specialization

Abstract

Most previous research concerning serious leisure has focused on testing the nature of activities using six distinctive qualities proposed by Robert Stebbins. Viewed from a different perspective, our study treats serious leisure as a type of personal characteristic. We tested the causal relationships between serious leisure and recreation specialization. This paper describes how serious leisure has a positive relationship with recreation specialization. Having a career in a recreational endeavor, making significant personal efforts and identifying strongly with the activity are the major predictors of recreation specialization. All of the qualities of serious leisure that were evaluated with the exception of the unique ethos were found to be positively related to past experience and centrality-to-lifestyle.

Keywords:

• birdwatchers
• learning
• recreation
• Taiwan

Notes

∗∗, p < 0.01.