SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2014, 42(7), 1117-1126

© Society for Personality Research

http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2014.42.7.1117

PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND SUBJECTIVE

WELL-BEING OF SERIOUS LEISURE PARTICIPANTS

HUIMEI LIU
Zhejiang University

I examined the relationships among personality, leisure satisfaction, and subjective well-being
(SWB) in a sample of participants (N = 193) in 7 arts groups at a key eastern Chinese
university. Correlations and regression results indicated: (a) extraversion was significantly
positively correlated with overall leisure satisfaction, whereas neuroticism was significantly
negatively correlated with overall leisure satisfaction; (b) leisure satisfaction was significantly
positively correlated with SWB; (c) after personality traits were controlled, leisure satisfaction
still impacted SWB positively. Findings are discussed and practical implications are outlined.

Keywords: personality traits, extraversion, leisure satisfaction, neuroticism, serious leisure,

subjective well-being.

There have been sweeping changes in the delivery of Chinese higher education
in the past three decades. In 1977, the National Higher Education Entrance
Examination was reinstated after a lapse of 10 years caused by the Chinese
Cultural Revolution. In 2010, there were about 31 million students attending
the various types of higher education institutions in China (“China’s higher
education students,” 2011). However, the lifestyle and subjective well-being
(SWB) of university students in China have been a source of concern to the
government and to Chinese society in general. One reason is that students in
higher education have much more time available for leisure activities than
when they were secondary- or primary-school students and they find it quite

Huimei Liu, School of International Studies, and the Asian Pacific Centre for the Education and
Study of Leisure, Zhejiang University.
Preparation of this article was supported by grants from the Chinese Social Science Fund (10BGL047).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Huimei Liu, School of International
Studies, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310058, People’s
Republic of China. Email: [email protected]

1117
1118 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING

challenging learning how to employ their leisure time. Zeng (2006) found that
surfing on the Internet was Chinese college students’ main leisure activity, and
that the main motivation for leisure participation for most college students was
to pass the time. In a report by the China Internet Network Information Centre
(2010) it was indicated that more than 24 million Chinese youth were Internet
addicts. Of this number, 15.6% of those aged between 18 and 23 years were
addicted and 10% of college students had symptoms of Internet addiction.
Therefore, the quality of the leisure activity of Chinese young people is an issue
that has social significance and is worth examining. Stebbins (1992) described
leisure activities as ranging from casual and fleeting engagements to intensive
short-term projects, or more serious lifetime commitments that require a great
deal of time and energy. Previous researchers (e.g., Lu & Argyle, 1994) have
also shown that when people experienced a serious, committed, and constructive
leisure activity, they felt greater leisure satisfaction and well-being. However, the
existing research on Chinese university students’ leisure has mainly been focused
on their leisure lifestyle (Chi, 2012; Ye, 2011), leisure education (Liu & Zhang,
2009; Sun, 2011), and physical leisure (Xie, Huang, & Huang, 2003; Zhang,
2010). Lu and Hu (2005) also claimed that personality was a significant predictor
of SWB. Yet there is a lack of research about serious leisure, personality, leisure
satisfaction, and SWB.

Literature Review

Serious leisure was conceptualized by Stebbins (1992, p. 3) as “the systematic

pursuit of deep satisfaction through an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity
that participants find so substantial and interesting that, in the typical case,
they launch themselves on a career centered on acquiring and expressing its
special skill, knowledge, and experience.” According to Stebbins, serious leisure
demonstrates six distinguishing qualities that indicate committed involvement
in the activity and differentiates it from other casual leisure: perseverance,
significant effort, career development, durable benefits, strong identification,
and unique ethos. Leisure satisfaction is defined as “the positive perceptions or
feelings that an individual forms, elicits, or gains as a result of engaging in chosen
leisure activities. It is the degree to which one is presently content or pleased
with his/her general leisure experiences and situations” (Beard & Ragheb,
1980, p. 22). Beard and Ragheb also developed the Leisure Satisfaction Scale
(LSS) to measure six dimensions of leisure satisfaction, namely, psychological,
physiological, educational, social, relaxation, and aesthetic. Subjective well-being
“is a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses,
domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction” (Diener, Suh,
Lucas, & Smith, 1999, p. 277).
 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING 1119
Serious Leisure, Leisure Satisfaction, and Subjective Well-Being
Participants in serious leisure activities have been reported to have more
leisure satisfaction and SWB than do people who do not take part in such
activities. For example, Lu and Argyle (1994) found that people reported greater
leisure satisfaction and happiness when they had a serious, committed, and
constructive leisure activity. In contrast, less serious leisure activities, such as
watching television, have been found to produce less leisure satisfaction (Lu &
Argyle, 1993). Cheng (2010) explored the relationships among serious leisure,
hobby leisure, casual leisure, and leisure satisfaction of gardeners in Australia.
The results indicated that those who engaged in gardening at the serious level
received the greatest satisfaction, and casual gardeners obtained a moderate level
of satisfaction.
The contribution of serious leisure to SWB has been specifically interpreted
through three linking psychological mechanisms: mastery, meaning, and affiliation
(Newman, Tay, & Diener, 2014). First, serious leisure provides mastery as a link
with SWB. Mastery experiences encompass activities that challenge individuals
and provide learning opportunities. Mastery “focuses on the efforts put into
honing one’s skills or achieving a new level of success in a leisure activity…
Mastery describes the overcoming of challenges and betterment of skill in leisure
activities.” (Newman et al., 2014, p. 12). Second, serious leisure promotes
SWB through creating meaning. Meaningful leisure activities are a means by
which individuals gain something important or valuable in life (Iwasaki, 2007).
Researchers have found that serious leisure activities such as singing in a choir
(Liu & Stebbins, 2014), running (Major, 2001), quilting (King, 2001), and
Aboriginal dancing (Iwasaki & Bartlett, 2006) give meaning and purpose to
the lives of serious leisure participants. Meaningful leisure activities enable the
individual to feel the value of that activity, and reduce negative emotions while
promoting positive emotions, and life satisfaction. Third, serious leisure brings
social rewards including social attraction and group accomplishment, and the
social rewards promote SWB via affiliation, because belonging, relatedness, or
affiliation (being loved, being needed) is a core psychological need based on self-
determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000). For instance, Liu
and Stebbins found that choral singers developed a special bond with each other
just as family members do. This kind of affiliation among the members of a choir
is not only an attraction that keeps the group together, but also a strong source of
their happiness in belonging to this group.

Personality, Leisure Satisfaction, and Subjective Well-Being

It has been found that personality is associated with certain leisure activities.
Hills and Argyle (1998) found that extraversion was a personality correlate
for belonging to sports clubs and participating in competitive sports. Neurotic
1120 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING

people, however, preferred hobbies rather than sports (Lu & Argyle, 1994).
Extraversion has also been found to be a positive predictor of happiness whereas
neuroticism was found to be a negative one, both in Western and Eastern cultures
(Argyle, Martin, & Lu, 1995; Costa & McCrae, 1980; Diener, Sundvik, Pivot,
& Fujita, 1992; Lu & Hu, 2005; Lu & Shih, 1997; Lu, Shih, Lin, & Ju, 1997).
Researchers have shown there are associations between personality, leisure
satisfaction, and SWB, yet, to my knowledge, none have examined these factors
together with serious leisure pursuits. However, engaging in serious leisure
pursuits is important and meaningful for Chinese university students. Leisure is
serious by virtue of the type of activity itself and by the attitude of the participant
in this activity, particularly the time, efforts, and skills that the individual devotes
to the activity. Taking part in serious leisure is also supposed to have long-term or
lasting benefits to the participants. Considering the large population of Chinese
college students – over 31 million – and the strong attraction for them of leisure
activities that are not serious, for example, computer games that bring only
short-lived pleasure, and in the long term, may bring harm, such as addiction,
to the participants, it is worthwhile examining the participation of Chinese
students in serious leisure, in relation to their personality, leisure satisfaction,
and SWB. The results could provide evidence for the necessity and urgency for
Chinese authorities to pay more attention to the cultivation of serious leisure
participation among university students. Therefore, my aim in this study was
to examine the associations of personality, leisure satisfaction, and SWB with
serious leisure participation. The research questions in this study were: (a) What
is the correlation between personality and leisure satisfaction of serious leisure
participants? (b) What is the correlation between leisure satisfaction and SWB of
serious leisure participants? (c) What are the impacts of personality and leisure
satisfaction on SWB of serious leisure participants?

Method

Participants
I chose members of arts organizations at a key Chinese university to be the
sampling pool of serious leisure participants. Specifically, I chose the art troupe
at the university, which includes a choir, dance group, symphony orchestra,
national music orchestra, and the Black-White Drama Club, as well as two other
similar student arts organizations: the Fanyin Drama Club and the Beijing Opera
Association. I approached the members of the groups during the breaks in their
weekly rehearsal and practice, so that they could complete the survey on site.
Break periods ranged from 15 to 20 minutes and it took about 8 minutes for the
respondents to fill in the survey. The data collection period was in April and May
of 2013. I collected 200 completed copies of the survey form from the arts club
 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING 1121
members. After those forms in which missing data exceeded the threshold of
10% were excluded from the study, there were 193 usable responses. Of the 193
participants, 78 (40.41%) were male and 115 (59.59%) were female. Respondents
ranged in age from 17 to 38 years old, with a mean of 20.97 years (SD = 2.22).

Measures
I compiled a survey that consisted of sections to measure leisure satisfaction,
personality, SWB, frequency and duration of serious leisure participation,
and sociodemographic information. I used the Leisure Satisfaction Scale
(Beard & Ragheb, 1980), the extraversion and neuroticism scales in the NEO
Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and the Personal Wellbeing
Index (International Wellbeing Group, 2013) to measure leisure satisfaction,
personality and SWB, respectively. I pretested the survey in March 2013.
All measures yielded good internal reliability values, with Cronbach alpha
coefficients being .90, .82, .80, and .90, respectively; all higher than Nunnally’s
(1978) recommended minimum level of .70.

Results

Data were entered, cleaned, and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Data analysis
consisted of four stages. First, I computed the scores of the six leisure satisfaction
dimensions, extraversion, and neuroticism by summing up the corresponding
items and dividing that number by the number of items used in each scale.
Second, I computed Cronbach’s alphas for leisure satisfaction, extraversion,
neuroticism, and SWB to assess internal reliability using a criterion score of .70
or higher (Cortina, 1993). Third, I ran Pearson correlations between personality
and leisure satisfaction, and leisure satisfaction and SWB. Multiple regressions
were run with demographic information being entered first, followed by
extraversion, neuroticism, and, lastly, leisure satisfaction.
The correlation between personality and leisure satisfaction indicated that
extraversion was significantly positively correlated with leisure satisfaction
(r = .324, p < .01) and neuroticism was significantly negatively correlated with
leisure satisfaction (r = -.197, p < .01; see Table 1). There was also a significantly
positive correlation between leisure satisfaction and SWB (see Table 2).
I conducted multiple regression analysis to explore further the contribution of
personality and leisure satisfaction to SWB. Results indicated that controlling for
the impact of demographic variables, extraversion was positively related to SWB
( = .897, t = 4.999, p < .001) and neuroticism was negatively related to SWB
( = -.436, t = -2.400, p < .05); and controlling for both demographic and
personality variables, leisure satisfaction was still positively related to SWB
( = .392, t = 2.261, p < .05).
1122 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING

Table 1. Correlations Between Personality and Leisure Satisfaction

L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 LS E N

L1 1
L2 .613** 1
L3 .690** .570** 1
L4 .710** .504** .600** 1
L5 .524** .347** .451** .370** 1
L6 .347** .377** .347** .398** .339** 1
LS .856** .724** .795** .765** .725** .632** 1
E .332** .197** .370** .216** .275** .056 .324** 1
N -.264** -.093 -.137 -.250** -.103 -.059 -.197** .427** 1

Note. 1 = psychological leisure satisfaction, 2 = education leisure satisfaction, 3 = social leisure

satisfaction, 4 = relaxation leisure satisfaction, 5 = physiological leisure satisfaction, 6 = aesthetical
leisure satisfaction, LS = overall leisure satisfaction, E = extraversion, N = neuroticism. ** p < .01.

Table 2. Correlations Between Leisure Satisfaction and Subjective Well-Being

S S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 LS

S 1
S1 .779** 1
S2 .468** .504** 1
S3 .508** .397** .466** 1
S4 .425** .464** .482** .600** 1
S5 .366** .364** .408** .423** .603** 1
S6 .412** .370** .346** .403** .586** .711** 1
S7 .509** .392** .443** .493** .567** .501** .545** 1
S8 .509** .440** .503** .435** .437** .349** .385** .574** 1
LS .336** .203** .166* .160* .180* .252** .358** .262** .286** 1

Note. S = well-being in life as a whole, S1 = standard of living well-being, S2 = health well-being,

S3 = achievement well-being, S4 = social well-being, S5 = safety well-being, S6 = community
well-being, S7 = future well-being, S8 = spirituality/religion well-being, LS = overall leisure
satisfaction. * p < .05, ** p < .01.

Discussion

The objectives in this study were to examine the associations among

personality, leisure satisfaction, and SWB of students at a Chinese university who
were engaging in serious leisure activities. Results indicated that extraversion
had a significantly positive correlation with the overall leisure satisfaction of the
students who completed the survey, and neuroticism had significantly negative
correlation with their overall leisure satisfaction; the relationship of leisure
satisfaction with SWB was positive in every domain. Although extraversion
and neuroticism were significant predictors of SWB, leisure satisfaction had
 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING 1123
incremental effects on SWB after personality traits were controlled. Our findings
in this study not only supported the findings reported in existing literature that
personality and leisure satisfaction are both significant predictors of SWB (Costa
& McCrae, 1980; Diener et al., 1992; Lu & Hu, 2005; Lu & Shih, 1997; Lu
et al., 1997), but also expanded on the relationships of personality and leisure
satisfaction with serious leisure (Stebbins, 1992). Previous researchers (Cheng,
2010; Lu & Argyle, 1993, 1994) and results in my own recent work (Liu & Yu,
2014) have indicated that there was greater leisure satisfaction and happiness
when participants were engaging in a serious, committed, and constructive
leisure activity compared to a nonserious leisure activity. According to the
results in my study, engaging in a serious leisure activity enhanced the SWB of
the people who took part in the study beyond the effect of personality, and this
supports findings reported in earlier literature (Iwasaki & Bartlett, 2006; King,
2001; Liu & Stebbins, in press; Major, 2001; Newman et al., 2014). However,
contrary to the finding reported by Hills and Argyle (1998) that personality was
not associated with participation in amateur music groups, according to the
results of my survey, personality was significantly correlated with the amateur
music groups from which members took part in my study, including choir,
symphony orchestra, national music orchestra, and Beijing Opera Association.
The findings in my study have both a theoretical contribution to make and
practical implications. In terms of the former, my findings support the serious
leisure framework and its positive impacts on participants’ leisure satisfaction
and SWB. I have also extended the existing theories on personality, leisure
satisfaction, and SWB of serious leisure participants. In terms of the latter, the
results provide solid evidence to those involved with organizing leisure activities
at Chinese universities that they need to do much more in encouraging students
to participate in more serious leisure activities. These people should help build
students’ awareness of different leisure opportunities by providing information or
consultancy. Also, staff at Chinese universities can use their strength in helping
students acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities by encouraging students to
participate in serious leisure activities. For example, a way of achieving this
would be for Chinese universities to make available to students a range of leisure
activities such as music lessons, dance lessons, swimming lessons, gymnastics,
tennis classes, and badminton classes.
The focus in this research was a particular group of leisure participants, namely,
Chinese university students who were taking part in serious leisure activities. The
focus on this one group has both an advantage and disadvantages. The advantage
is that specific knowledge could be generated for this particular group; but
the disadvantages are that the generalizability of the findings are limited by
the restricted composition of the participant group and also by the fact that no
1124 PERSONALITY, LEISURE SATISFACTION, AND WELL-BEING

comparison was done between participants in serious and nonserious leisure

activities. Therefore, in future studies researchers should continue to explore the
differences in the relationships among personality, leisure satisfaction, and SWB
for participants in both serious and nonserious leisure activities, and should also
expand the range of serious leisure activities included in the research.

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