When leisure engenders health: fragile effects and precautions

ABSTRACT

In common sense much of leisure is seen in simple terms: it is fun. Such an image even prevails in research specialties and teaching programmes in colleges and universities operating outside the units of these institutions that are devoted to the study of leisure. This indictment includes the health sciences and their instructional programmes. The serious leisure perspective is used to identify six salubrious effects and the activities that produce them. The effects are well-being, physical conditioning, cognitive development, repose from stress, sociality, and self-fulfilment and optimism. There are also precautions that accompany these effects, which are discussed under the headings of well-being, repose, and leisure abandonment. Together these three weaken the effects just described, showing various conditions where the latter fail to operate optimally.

KEYWORDS:

• Serious leisure perspective
• common sense
• well-being
• leisure abandonment
• health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A partial literature search revealed only one article (Woodside, Caldwell, and Spurr 2006) and a brief mention of the idea (Samdahl 2005, 346).

2 Here I am speaking of ‘aerobic activity’ in the broad sense, to all activity that calls for such effort.

3 The third type of leisure reading is that done for pleasure (Stebbins 2013).

4 Simmel’s essay was initially published in German in 1911.

5 This section is based on Stebbins (2008).

6 Routier (2013) interviewed a sample of physically active hobbyists who abandoned their activities because of this contingency as well as some of the others discussed in this section.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Stebbins

Robert Stebbins is Emeritus Professor at the University of Calgary. His most recent book, The Serious Leisure Perspective: A Synthesis is in press with Palgrave Macmillan.