“My hobby is global warming and peak oil”: sustainability as serious leisure

ABSTRACT

Research has not explored pro-environmental behaviours as serious leisure. As part of a broader project evaluating a household sustainability initiative on the Sunshine Coast in regional Australia, four focus groups were conducted with older people leading sustainable lifestyles. This exploratory research draws on this qualitative data, with a thematic content analysis revealing that these older sustainability leaders viewed and experienced their pro-environmental behaviours as serious leisure. They felt an intergenerational ethical and moral responsibility to tackle the challenge of climate change, arguing it was “our actions, our mess, our responsibility”. All had a strong interest in and passion for sustainability, deriving great pleasure from ongoing knowledge and skill development of researching, learning about, trialling, evaluating and discussing new sustainability technologies, approaches or routines. However, their sustainability hobby was intellectually, physically and emotionally demanding and, sometimes, socially isolating, as they were viewed as a “tree hugging-looney!”. In reframing sustainability as serious leisure, this paper concludes by calling for researchers to engage with, test and expand this conceptualization.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable lifestyles
• serious leisure
• older people
• pro-environment actions

Acknowledgments

All views are the author’s, with aspects of this work partly supported by a small research grant from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council to evaluate the Living Smart Homes programme. As well as acknowledging the research team (Dr Lorraine Bell, Dr Jennifer Summerville, Dr Karen Barnett & Professor Laurie Buys), I would like to thank all the participants for their willing participation, honesty and good humour as we discussed sustainability.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

All views are the author’s, with aspects of this work partly supported by a small research grant from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council to evaluate the Living Smart Homes programme.