Interventions in Leisure, Self-Management and Youth Wellbeing: A Systematic Review

This work presents a systematic review on self-management, leisure, youth and wellbeing, following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Considering the long research tradition in leisure studies addressing youth wellbeing but the scarce evidence available on leisure-based interventions specifically promoting self-management and its favourable influences on non-vulnerable and vulnerable youth, the following research question was answered through this systematic review: what interventions or good practices in self-management of leisure have an impact on wellbeing among youth, both vulnerable and non-vulnerable youth? After applying the PRISMA 2020 protocol, several studies with strong relevance to the topic of study were reviewed, and the main findings were discussed. The discussion covers key topics addressed in the reviewed literature regarding self-management, leisure, youth and wellbeing outcomes, as well as features or types of interventions working on self-management with a greater contribution to youth wellbeing. In this regard, interventions satisfying autonomy, competence, and relatedness consistently yield higher intrinsic motivation and wellbeing; youth who independently organise leisure report higher satisfaction and emotional benefits; and team-based interventions outperform individual or sedentary pursuits in perceived wellbeing. Moreover, important gaps in the literature were identified so that future research can be oriented towards closing them, such as the age bias with a predominant focus on ages from 10 to 19 years, which leaves emerging adults (20–29) underrepresented; the short-term focus due to most studies measuring only pre-to-post outcomes instead of long-term impact with scarce follow-up data; and geographical and cultural gaps, as the literature is concentrated in Western cultures.