Thriving through stress: leisure satisfaction, hope, growth, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Leisure can serve as a resource for managing stress and eliciting positive thoughts and emotions, which contribute to well-being. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between leisure satisfaction, hope, stress-related growth (SRG), and psychological well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 547 U.S. residents completed an online survey in July 2020. A series of path analyses were used to examine six hypotheses. The results showed leisure satisfaction positively impacts SRG and enhances hope. One surprising finding is the negative relationship between leisure and psychological well-being, which is worthy of further investigation. The study highlights the importance of leisure in generating positive emotions about the future, and the role of hope in mediating the relationship between pleasurable leisure experiences and SRG during periods of adversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Leisure satisfaction
• hope
• stress-related growth (SRG)
• psychological well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Top-down well-being model “posits happiness is a consequence of global and relatively stable features of personality, which influence the way individuals perceive and interpret events … Satisfactions are consequences rather than cases of well-being” (Kuykendall et al., 2015, p. 367).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Education and Human Sciences at South Dakota State University and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Multi-state (#1016891) and Hatch (#1016822) project.