An Exploration Of College Students’ Leisure Participation, Leisure Satisfaction And Subjective Well-being-from The Perspective Of Serious Leisure

In the past three decades, China has witnessed the fast development of economy and the improvement of people’s living standards. This era has been significantly featured with leisure. However, negative feelings such as anxiety, depression or unhappiness haunt many people, including college students. It is of great significance to pay attention to college students’ subjective wellbeing. Lu&Argyle (1994) has proposed that when people experience a serious, committed and constructive leisure activity, they have greater leisure satisfaction and well-being. Therefore, the study aims to explore serious leisure and its effects on the subjective well-being of Chinese college students.A qualitative research was conducted through participant observation and in-depth interview with a case study of Wenqin Chorus of Zhejiang University. The social psychological experience of college students participating in the chorus from the serious leisure perspective proposed by Stebbins (1992,1997,2006) was explored. The results show that participants express great interest and passion for the leisure pursuit and commit much time and energy in the activity. The chorus, as a serious leisure pursuit, is a deeply rewarding and fulfilling leisure for the participants.Besides, in order to further examine the relationship among serious leisure, leisure satisfaction and subjective well-being, a quantitative research was employed to study the Zhejiang University students who are involved in serious leisure activities. Results indicate that serious leisure participants experience high leisure satisfaction and subjective well-being and serious leisure participants’leisure satisfaction is significantly correlated with subjective well-being and a significant predictor of subjective well-being.This study has important theoretical and practical implications. For the theoretical significance, it offered a thorough observation for the serious leisure life of college students from the perspective of serious leisure theory, and empirically explored the leisure satisfaction and subjective well-being of college students involved in serious leisure activity and examined the relationships among serious leisure participation, leisure satisfaction, and subjective well-being.For the practical significance, it is evident that serious leisure activities play an important role in the subjective well-being and life satisfaction of college students, so more attention and importance should be attached to the participation of serious leisure activities in the college campuses. And effective policies and measurement are expected to optimize the situations and facilitate the participation in serious leisure activities.