Differentiating personal facilitators of leisure participation: Socio-demographics, personality traits, and the need for sociability.
Journal
Journal of Tourism and Leisure Studies
Date Issued
2009-11
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper first compares the extent to which socio-demographics, personality traits, and the need for sociability each facilitates different kinds of leisure participation with the general population in Taiwan. It then distinguishes how some of these factors differ in facilitating leisure for men and women. By means of hierarchical regression analyses of data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey (n=2,144), we found that the participation in solitary leisure activities, including music listening and book reading, was overwhelmingly determined by socio-demographic factors, particularly age and education. In contrast, both personality traits and the need for sociability help explain who are engaged more often in mostly-social leisure such as gathering with friends and doing physical activities. Such intrapersonal and interpersonal forces also accounted for a larger proportion of the total explained variance. Although most measures of an individual's background were significant in differentiating who participated more in both solitary and mostly-social leisure, the activities differed markedly in the size effects of these measures. Furthermore, some of these personal measures facilitated leisure participation consistently, whereas others exerted somewhat contradictory or inconsistent effects, particularly within male and female subpopulations.
Type
journal article