The Influence of Leisure Engagement on Daily Emotional Well-Being

Abstract

Leisure engagement is believed to offer emotional benefits. However, relatively few studies have examined how leisure engagement influences emotional well-being in the context of individuals’ everyday lives. The current study examined the associations between leisure engagement and daily emotional well-being, as measured by participants’ mean levels of positive affect (PA), PA variability, and PA reactivity to stressors. Using smartphones, participants (n = 176) completed ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) 5 times per day for 14 consecutive days. The Pearson correlations indicated that the participants who engaged in leisure more frequently experienced higher mean levels of PA and lower PA variability in daily life compared to those with less frequent leisure engagement. However, multilevel models indicated that individuals’ differences in frequency of leisure engagement did not influence their emotional reactivity in response to daily stressors. The findings extend the importance of leisure engagement to consider the dynamics of daily emotional well-being.

Keywords:

• Affect variability
• ecological momentary assessment
• emotional reactivity
• leisure benefits
• positive affect

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this work was orally presented at the 2018 National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) conference in Indianapolis, IN. We thank the conference participants for their constructive comments.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R01 AG039409, R01 AG042595, P01 AG03949, CTSA 1UL1TR001073 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), the Leonard and Sylvia Marx Foundation, and the Czap Foundation..