The meaning of leisure in everyday life

Abstract One of the ongoing problems surrounding the whole area of leisure studies concerns conceptualization of the term leisure itself. Few empirical studies to date have looked at the meaning of leisure, and even fewer have incorporated a grounded theory approach. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, the present study employed a time‐diary technique combined with in‐depth interviews to explore perceptions of leisure situations among a random sample of married couples. The results showed that although leisure could be experienced during almost any type of activity, there was considerable consensus with regard to the perceptual factors associated with leisure situations. The factors shown to best differentiate leisure from non‐leisure were enjoyment, freedom of choice, relaxation, intrinsic motivation, and the lack of evaluation. None of these factors alone can be equated with the concept of leisure, but the combination of three or more factors leads to accurate predictions of the definition of situations as leisure.