A Research On The Leisure Function Of Urban Occupational Group

Leisure becomes an important aspect of current social life which shows a beautifulspiritual homeland. International Leisure Industry Association sets up the LeisureEconomic Development Alliance in Beijing in January2014. It means that whenChina internationalizes gradually, leisure industry can take people’s fundamentalinterests in this region into consideration and contribute to peace and stability in theworld. In this context, researching leisure function in society is a top priority inleisure study. In the meantime, it is also the focus of this study. Searching the leisurefunction can provide theoretical basis for leisure industry and theoretical support forurban leisure development. It also can improve the life quality of residents in ourcountry and help the government to achieve social stability.At first, by using the literature methodology, this study pursues the functionalismpath of functionalist theory in sociology and previous studies of leisure function andtries to mix both of them together in order to find out a new method for leisurefunction research. Then, by using questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviewmethod, this study analyzes the leisure function of the urban occupational group,expounds the mechanisms of the leisure function from the perspective of Parsons’structural functionalism and Merton’s experience functionalism.According to Merton’s functionalism, this article divided leisure function of urbanoccupational group into four parts: the eufunction, the dysfunction, the manifestfunction and the latent function. The eufunction includes three levels of leisurefunctional indicators of the urban occupational group. The indicators in target layercover the functions to individual and the functions to society. The functions toindividual include enjoyment function, development function, socialized function, thesymbolic function and health function. The functions to society comprise economicand cultural function and community function. Under the seven indicators of criterionlayer, there are30functional parameters, which are also sorted by the importancedegree. Results demonstrate that influenced by the economic development level, urban culture background, accessibility and inclusiveness in social environment incity and the urban occupational group’s own leisure value, Individual leisureexperience inspires different functions of different properties. Furthermore, thisarticle shows the features of urban occupational group’s leisure function are thatbalance between work and leisure influences the exertion of leisure function greatly;the differences of individual of this group are significant; the harmfulness ofdysfunction is the most serious.