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Information activities in serious
leisure as a catalyst for
self-actualisation and
social engagement
Yazdan Mansourian
School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia
Information
activities in
serious leisure
887
Received 9 August 2020
Revised 28 December 2020
Accepted 1 January 2021
Abstract
Purpose – This paper reports findings from a research project about human information behaviour in the
context of serious leisure. Various forms of information activities in this context have been identified and
categorised to depict common patterns of information seeking, sharing, using and producing.
Design/methodology/approach – The project adopted a qualitative approach in an interpretive paradigm
using a thematic analysis method. Data-collection technique was semi-structured interview and 20 volunteers
were recruited via a maximum variation sampling strategy. The collected data was transcribed and
thematically analysed to identify the main concepts and categories.
Findings – The participants have been experiencing six qualities of serious leisure during their long-term
engagement with their hobbies or voluntary jobs and their experiences can be fully mapped onto the serious
leisure perspective. The findings also confirmed serious leisure is a unique context in terms of the diversity of
information activities embedded into a wide range of individual and collective actions in this context.
Information seeking and sharing in serious leisure is not only a source of personal satisfaction for the
participants, it also can provide them with a sense of purpose in a meaningful journey towards selfactualization and social inclusion.
Research limitations/implications – The generalisability of the findings needs to be examined in wider
populations. Nonetheless, the existing findings can be useful for follow-up research in the area.
Practical implications – This study will be useful in both policy and practice levels. In the policy level, it will
be beneficial for cultural policy makers to gain a better understanding about the nature of leisure activities. In
the practice level, it will be helpful for serious leisure participants to understand the value of information
seeking and sharing in their leisure endeavours. Also, information professionals can use it to enhance the
quality of their services for the serious leisure participants who are usually among devoted patrons of libraries,
museums, archives and galleries.
Social implications – Learning about serious leisure can provide new insights on people preferences in terms
of choosing different entertaining and recreational pursuits – such as indoor and outdoor hobbies – in their
free time.
Originality/value – The informational aspects of serious leisure is an emerging and evolving ground of
research. This paper provides empirical evidence on this topic from a specific context in the regional areas in
Australia.
Keywords Information seeking, Information sharing, Social engagement, Serious leisure, Information
grounds, Human information behaviour, Communities of interests, Self-actualisation
Paper type Research paper
“Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure”.
Mortimer Adler
This paper is part of the author’s research program about human information behaviour in the context of
serious leisure funded by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Charles Sturt University in Australia. The
author express his deep appreciation to all the participants in this study. What they have done is a great
example of generous information sharing. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their
constructive comments.
Funding: This study was funded by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Charles Sturt University in
Australia and the grant number is A541.3101.30603.
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 77 No. 4, 2021
pp. 887-905
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-08-2020-0134
JD
77,4
888
1. Introduction
Leisure activities are extremely diverse ranging from laying down on a couch and watching
television to rock climbing. It can be purely pleasurable like taking a leisurely walk around a
nearby park or highly challenging such as ultramarathon. In terms of the level of dedication
and the required skills, a leisure pursuit can be casual or serious. Stebbins (1982) introduced
the concept of serious leisure as all forms of leisure activities that require dedication, longterm commitment and special skills/knowledge. Leisure activities that need perseverance,
can potentially turn into a career, need significant personal effort, create durable benefits,
have a unique ethos and can form a feeling of identity are categorised as serious in this theory
(Stebbins, 1982, 2001). This original idea gradually formed a conceptual framework which is
now known as the Serious Leisure Perspective. It has been used in many studies, including the
current one, as a theoretical framework to explore the realm of leisure.
Serious leisure is a multidisciplinary topic and scholars from a broad range of disciplines
look at it from their own perspectives. For example, from a social science view we can focus on
the social benefits of serious leisure and how it can be a source of social connectedness. At the
same time, scholars from multidisciplinary areas like wellbeing and quality of life focus on the
importance of leisure as a sources of meaning and subjective wellbeing (Sirgy et al., 2017).
This paper focuses on the human information behaviour aspects in serious leisure and
reports findings from a qualitative study. The project has been carried out in Wagga Wagga
that is a regional city in New South Wales of Australia.
2. Literature review
The existing literature on serious leisure is scattered in various disciplines ranging from
psychology and sociology to tourism and hospitality. However, leisure studies acts like an
umbrella term to bring the various studies into a unified domain. Nonetheless, each study has
its own focal point which makes it closer to one discipline or another. For example, positive
psychology scholars investigate personal benefits of serious leisure (Chen, 2014; Pi et al., 2014;
Liu and Yu, 2015; Kono et al., 2020). Their research has shown the participants generally
experience positive psychological wellbeing, durable pleasure and resilience. Also, it helps
them to reduce the stress of everyday life and increase their self-confidence to be more
empowered to cope with challenges through a sense of control and self-determination (Kim
et al., 2019). They have studied people from different social status and ages. For example,
Chen (2014) reported that older adult volunteers having greater serious leisure characteristics
enjoy a higher level of subjective wellbeing. As a result, serious leisure engagement can
potentially contribute to creating a joyful and meaningful life (Iwasaki, 2007). Furthermore,
serious leisure can be a type of coping strategy for people who are under huge pressure of the
overwhelming demands of their job (Bunea, 2020).
In general, research shows serious leisure can bring numerous personal and social benefits
for the participants. From a personal point of view this is a source of self-confidence, sense of
fulfilment, self-enrichment, self-expression, enhancement of self-image and satisfaction.
From a social perspective, it is a rich source of social interaction, social inclusion and
belongingness (Caldwell, 2005; Tsaur and Liang, 2008; Pi et al., 2014; Shupe and Gagne, 2016;
Lee and Ewert, 2019; Dillette et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2014; Lee, 2020). Most studies report both
personal and social benefits. For instance, Phillips and Fairley (2014) report:
It was clear from the participants’ responses that umpiring was incorporated into their lives as a
means as a key activity through which they persevered, and obtained beneficial outcomes including
mastery of skills, enhancing self-image, socialising, as well as general health and fitness. (p. 196)
Moreover, participation in serious leisure groups can facilitate the creation of social worlds,
including development of social capital through improved means of social cohesion (Lee and
Ewert, 2019; Dillette et al., 2019; Beaumont and Brown, 2015). Besides, serious leisure
provides people with many opportunities to explore their capabilities and find their real
strengths and passions. Thus, they will be able to experience new challenges and achieve
greater goals. Personal benefits are also enormous including constant acquisition of
knowledge (Cox et al., 2017), facing challenges (Lee and Ewert, 2019; Lee and Payne, 2016),
personal commitment (Veal, 2017), improving emotional wellbeing and a means for authentic
communication and emotional expression (Rampley et al., 2019) and also identity
development (Lee and Ewert, 2019).
Of course, this is not all about the positive outcomes. Serious leisure can create negative
effects as well. For example, Rampley et al. (2019) report that it can potentially have a
detrimental effect on the participants’ wellbeing if they become overly absorbed to the
activity. Besides, most results are contextually bound to cultural and social backgrounds and
we cannot easily generalise the findings. For example, Kono et al. (2020) examined the
relationship between serious leisure and meaning of life as a part of eudaimonic wellbeing in
two groups of Japanese and Euro-Canadian participants. They discovered cross-national
differences in the relationships between serious leisure and meaning of life as a result of
cultural differences.
The informational dimensions of serious leisure is a productive topic in information
behaviour scholarship because participation in serious leisure usually requires a constant
pursuit of information and typically involves many information activities such as information
seeking and sharing. Ross (1999) was among the first scholars who investigated this topic. She
interviewed a group of committed readers to understand how pleasurable reading can be as a
source of information. Around the same time, Jones and Symon (2001) studied lifelong learning
as a type of serious leisure. Nonetheless, Hartel (2003) took the key step in this area when she
introduced serious leisure as a new frontier in library and information science scholarship. A
few years later Stebbins (2009) mapped this topic onto his original framework.
Since then a number of investigations have been carried out to investigate the
informational features of serious leisure in different groups. For example, Hartel (2006, 2010)
report findings form her research about information activities and resources in gourmet
cooking as a popular hobby. Lee and Trace (2009) explored rubber duck collecting. Case
(2010) studied the information sources and information seeking habits of coin collectors.
Fulton (2016) explored the genealogists’ information world and focused on how they create
information in their hobbies. Fulton (2017) studied urban exploration and investigated the
concept of secrecy and information creation and sharing in urban exploration.
In general, during the past two decades serious leisure has been an emerging and evolving
topic in information behaviour scholarship and several studies have been done on this topic.
For examples, leisure information behaviours in hobby quilting sites (Gainor, 2008),
communities of hobbyist collectors (Lee and Trace, 2009), dietary and food blogging
(Savolainen, 2010; Cox and Blake, 2011), online fantasy sports (Hirsh et al., 2012), retired
investors, (O’Connor, 2013), music record collectors (Margree et al., 2014), re-enactment
(Robinson and Yerbury, 2015), motorsport enthusiasts (Joseph, 2016), gardening (Cheng et al.,
2017), genealogy (Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe, 2017), car restoration (Olsson and Lloyd,
2017), media fan communities (Price, 2017; Price and Robinson, 2017), information activities
in ultra-running (Gorichanaz, 2017), fun life-contexts (Ocepek et al., 2018), information
practices of music fans (Vesga Vinchira, 2019), basketball Twitter community (Sanchez, 2020)
and music information seeking in fan clubs (Bronstein and Lidor, 2020) are among the long
list of scholarly publications in this field.
Mansourian (2020) reviewed the literature and suggested a model to demonstrate the
diversity of information sources and patterns of information consumption in this setting. The
model categorises serious leisure activities into three clusters: (1) intellectual pursuits, (2)
creating or collecting physical objects/materials/products and (3) experiential activities.
Accordingly, the participants are divided in three groups of appreciators, producers/collectors
Information
activities in
serious leisure
889
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77,4
and performers. His review revealed in spite of commonalities among information activities in
these groups, each category has its own priorities, source preferences and information
behaviour.
2.1 Research questions
890
The current study aims to address the following research questions:
(1) To what extent can we map the participants’ stories onto the serious leisure
perspective?
(2) What are the common patterns of information activities in the context of serious
leisure?
(3) What are the contextual factors that impact on information activities in serious
leisure?
3. Research method
This project adopted an interpretive paradigm and a qualitative approach. The datacollection technique was a semi-structured interview with open ended questions
(presented in the Appendix) to understand the participants’ deep reflection about their
leisure activities. The researcher used interview as the data collection tool because it
enabled him to deeply explore the leisure experiences of the participants. Interview was
an efficient data collection tool for the purpose of this study because it provided the
researcher with an opportunity to listen to the participants’ stories and learn about their
feelings, motivations and achievements. Moreover, this is a very common tool in
qualitative leisure studies. As Cheng and Pegg (2016, p. 287) cited Bryman (2004) and
report when the researcher has a clear focus then the semi-structured interview is the
best means of data collection and enable her/him to delve more deeply into issues during
the conversations. For the same reason many other researchers in leisure studies have
used interview as their data-collection technique (e.g. Siegenthaler and O’Dell, 2003; Lee
et al., 2019; Bronstein and Lidor, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020).
As the research’s approach was qualitative, the researchers collected data until reaching a
saturation point but carried out a few more interviews to make sure there is sufficient
empirical evidence to address the research questions. The collected data has been transcribed
and analysed through a thematic analysis method (Bernard and Ryan, 2010; Braun and
Clarke, 2006; Castleberrya and Nolenb, 2018).
The Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics Committee has approved the
research proposal in February 2019. This approval has been based on the guidelines in the
National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research in Australia to make sure all the
ethical aspects of the research have been thoroughly considered in this study.
The research population included Wagga Wagga residents who are involved in at least
one form of serious leisure endeavours such as volunteering, hobbies or amateurism during
the past years. To have a broader perspective, the researcher used a maximum variation
sampling method (Seale et al., 2007) to include people from different backgrounds who have
been involved in different social activities. To form the sample, the researcher used Wagga
Wagga Community Directory published by the city council to identify and contact the
associations and societies in serious leisure and asked them to introduce potential
participants. He also requested them to distribute the information sheet among their
members. If they decided to take part in the study they have been free to choose between a
telephone and face-to-face interview. If they prefer face-to-face interview, it has been
conducted in a community centre or a public place like the city public library. The researcher
also provided them with detailed information about the project to address their queries.
During the data-collection process the researcher interviewed 20 participants (13 female and 7
male). Most of the participants preferred a telephone interview as it was easier to organise it.
At the end, 17 interviews have been done through the phone and only three interviewees
attended a face to face discussion.
Information
activities in
serious leisure
891
4. Findings
As the researcher used a maximum variation sampling, the participants have been involved
in a wide range of hobbies, amateurism and voluntary activities such as cycling, gardening,
knitting, soccer, bushwalking, traditional weaving, environmental activism, friends of the art,
tennis club, bonsai growing, cricket, table tennis, amateur filmmaking, volunteering in local
radios, music, poetry and volunteering in the public library language cafe for refugees and
recently arrived immigrants who need to improve their English. More details about the
sample and their activities are presented in Table 1. As the table shows, most participants (16
out of 20) have undergone some training to learn the required skills for their serious leisure
and only four of them were entirely relied on their own independent learning. On average they
have been involved with their hobbies or voluntary work for 17.5 years. Moreover, some of
them have been participating in more than one activity at the same time. The average time
they spend on their serious leisure was also varied from a few hours per week up to 25 h. For
some of them it was variable depending on the time of the year. For example, outdoor hobbies
like gardening, cycling or bushwalking mainly depend on the weather and cannot be done
regularly during the year. The years of involvement with serious leisure was also varied in
the sample ranging from 40 to 2 years. Nonetheless, the average years of activities for the
sample was 17.5 which means that most of them have been involved with their chosen
activity for a very long time.
Code
G
Type of serious leisure
YA
T
P1
M
Volunteer radio broadcasting
16
Yes
P2
M
Volunteer radio broadcasting
2.5
Yes
P3
M
Cycling, gardening and radio broadcasting
40
Yes
P4
F
Volunteering at a public library language cafe
2
Yes
P5
F
Volunteer mentorship and library language cafe
8
Yes
P6
F
Home library service, language cafe and knitting
8
Yes
P7
M
Volunteering at a charity and in a committee
5
No
P8
M
Various volunteering (e.g. community projects)
30
Yes
P9
M
Volunteering at several community groups
35
Yes
P10
F
Soccer playing and walking group
12
Yes
P11
F
Volunteering and fundraising campaigns
8
Yes
P12
F
Weaving with a weaving group
11
Yes
P13
F
Red cross volunteering and language cafe teaching
2.5
Yes
P14
F
Environmental activities and friends of the art
30
No
P15
F
Tennis club and red cross volunteering
10
Yes
P16
F
Bonsai growing and volunteering
21
No
P17
M
Cricket, table tennis, filmmaking and music
30
Yes
P18
F
Volunteering at a gallery
20
Yes
P19
F
Poetry writing and volunteering at a gallery
20
Yes
P20
F
Walking group and gardening
40
No
Note(s): YAs 5 The Years of Activities; T 5 Training; AHW 5 Average Hours per Week
AHW
25
10
15
2–4
6–7
5–6
10
Variable
10–12
3–5
5–10
Variable
4–5
Variable
Variable
Variable
Variable
5–6
Variable
10–15
Table 1.
List of the serious
leisure activities
carried out by the
participants
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Through a thematic analysis of the interview transcriptions a number of themes have been
identified and categorised. The findings are presented in three parts. The first part provides
the themes that demonstrate the qualities of serious leisure illustrating to what extent the
participants’ leisure activities can be mapped onto a serious leisure perspective. The second
part addresses the research questions about their information activities in the context of
serious leisure. The third part presents the findings about various sources of motivation and
inspiration helping them to continue their passionate journey and also some challenges and
barriers that hinder their activities in this context.
4.1 Part one: qualities of serious leisure
The collected data was analysed inductively to discover the themes. In the next stage, the
identified themes were compared with the serious leisure perspective deductively to find out to
what extent the results are compatible with the theoretical framework. The themes were
considerably well-matched with the framework and the participants experienced all the six
criteria of serious leisure in their hobbies, amateur and volunteer engagements. In a nutshell,
the sample has been actively involved with serious leisure and the below excerpts from the
interview transcriptions reveal that their actions can be fully mapped onto the perspective.
4.1.1 Perseverance and commitment. Based on Stebbins’ theory, serious leisure
participants follow their endeavours such as their hobbies or voluntary jobs continually
and demonstrate their commitment and dedication to it. The findings suggest perseverance
was an obvious theme in the dataset as all the participants were enthusiastically involved in
their chosen activity for a long term. The below excerpts disclose their dedication.
P1: . . . you’ve got to be committed to dedicate at least 15–20 hours . . . you need to provide, make sure
you’ve got the time to prepare your program . . . the most important thing is to be reliable and
committed.
P3. I’m committed to that, and obviously I’m also committed to board meetings which are once a
month. And any activities that flow out of the board meeting. So it’s reasonably flexible, but probably
is, I mean it does have some commitments.
P18. I suppose the first thing is they have to have the interest do not they and desire to be involved. I
think that would probably be crucial because if people are not interested in it they will not commit
themselves wholeheartedly.
Moreover, most of them have been involved in more than one hobby or voluntary job during
several years but usually one of the activities have been their main hobby and the rest
remained as secondary:
P8: I’ve done so many things. I used to volunteer to go into nursing homes and visit elderly people,
I’ve worked in an environment centre in one town as a volunteer where we would distribute
information on environmental issues . . .. So there are quite a few things that I’ve done over the years.
P9: I was on different sporting bodies, because my children play sport. But I was in a couple of other
community groups . . . I used to go to meetings to, because of my political aspirations, and then, also
influenced, as I say, by my children at school, commitments, and sporting committees and things
like that.
4.1.2 Potentiality to turn into a career. The second quality of serious leisure is its potential to
turn into a career. The findings suggest most of the participants have been thinking about the
possibility of turning their hobbies or voluntary job into a career as they could see the
potential for this shift. However, none of them went through this pathway and they prefer to
keep it just as a leisure pursuit or a voluntary practice.
P2. It is a leisure activity. I do not see it as work. I do not intend to make a career . . . I mean there have
been a number of people in the past who have gone on to become very well known in the industry and
they started at our radio station . . . but for me no it’s – it’s a leisure activity that I enjoy.
P1. I’ve always had an interest in radio, ever since I was a teenager. I did want to get into radio as a
career when I was young. But the opportunities and everything else just did – never happened . . .
when I came to live here . . . I looked for the local radio stations and I found that station, I liked the
music that they play.
4.1.3 Significant personal effort. The third feature of serious leisure, that makes it different
from casual leisure, is its requirement for personal effort based on some special knowledge,
skills or training. Therefore, serious leisure is not an effortless practice and can create various
challenges for the participants. Moreover, for the participants it can be difficult to strike a
balance between family, work and leisure. Sometimes engagement with serious leisure can be
expensive and time consuming which might be challenging for many people. In general, the
findings show these challenges are diverse including gender discrimination, financial
hardship, time limitation, overlap with work and even causing some conflicts with their
family life.
P10. We have lots of things going on, it’s just, you know we have been fighting really hard to be
treated the same as the men, we used to not get referees, well we do, we used to not get as many
games, now we do, so those are the sort of things.
P9: Since the late 1980’s, I have started researching . . . I research all the old hotels around the
Riverina, . . . and then out of that I’ve developed an interest in early settlement, the development of
villages and things like that; gold mining in the early days. It is still something that I would do every
day which is my passion.
P12. Sometimes it is hard to have distance because it does cross into your work as well as your
personal life . . . It’s about the distance. Sometimes you just have to do what’s expected of you and
that sometimes that can be a little bit draining mentally.
4.1.4 Durable personal and social benefits. The fourth characteristic appears across a broad
range of personal and social benefits of serious leisure ranging from pure enjoyment to selfexpression, satisfaction and social interaction. The findings indicate generally joyfulness was
a dominant feeling. The majority of the participants highlighted the fact they have been
involved with their leisure pursuits mainly because they enjoy it and they do not seek any
other accomplishment beyond that pure pleasure and joy.
P3: I did enjoy it, it was good fun, I really enjoyed the contact with the people and certainly the owners
of the Farm are lovely people to work for.
P7: We got an increase in local tournaments and participation and more people outdoors playing, you
know, getting out and throwing balls and enjoying themselves and meeting people.
Personal satisfaction was an evident theme which was frequently appeared in the dataset.
The below excerpts demonstrate the personal and social benefits the participants
experienced. The themes identified in this section can be categorised into some subcategories including: sense of achievement, social benefits, escaping from loneliness, pure
enjoyment, philanthropy and altruism.
P1: Just the satisfaction of seeing both people develop into their best, to be the best they can be and to
see the station grow to become a service in the community that people are fond of and respect. So it’s
really the satisfaction of seeing it work and seeing the people involved happily working within the
environment.
P4: It’s hard to say, I have not – I do not go into any competitions with it and I do not get any awards.
It’s just personal satisfaction.
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P6: Well, there’s a lot of satisfaction in doing it. Particularly the – the home library thing.
Sense of the achievement has always been one of the main motivations for serious leisure
participants. The participants in this study frequently reported that their volunteering and
hobbies bring a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment for them during all these years and it
has been a sources of motivation and inspiration for them to continue their engagement.
P3: I suppose when I reflect on my cycling I think, probably my major achievement is that I just
continue to do it. . . . I’ve been in a few, a few events and finished them all satisfactorily in reasonable
times. I’m not a high performance cyclist, and so I’ve never, I’ve never won any races, but always
been satisfied in just participating and that sense of achievement of having done it and getting better
all the time.
4.1.5 Unique ethos within a social world. The fifth category is about the unique ethos that
gradually grows around the serious leisure activity and the participants accept it as a norm
inside their subculture. An ethos works as a basis of a meaningful purpose and a source of
passion and enthusiasm for the participants which encourages them to carry on their
involvement in their chosen activity.
P10: Because we’re very much of the ethos that if you come to join the group you should contribute to
the group. So we would have people who say “I want to do this”, they come once, would not come
again. Or we’d have people who would come, who would never sort of give anything back.
P12: A lot of people think that yes it’s a weaving group and they’re going to learn how to weave in
that instance but I always say to people you need to go slowly and listen, listen, listen and you listen
to understand so it’s about actually sitting in the space and place of quietness and just being open to
allowing things to happen rather than demanding.
P18. I suppose a lifelong attitude or maybe a philosophy of mine has been an attitude to play your
part and my dad always said you can back your community but I’ve always had a lifelong experience
in learning and I mean a volunteering experience works both ways. Like I would love to pass on your
skills and knowledge and having an education background that’s been part of the love of learning.
4.1.6 Personal and social identity. The sixth category is forming a sense of identity for the
participants. The findings revealed they tend to identify strongly with their chosen hobby or
voluntary job. They typically speak proudly about what they do and consider it as a
worthwhile and meaningful dedication. Traditionally work, family or social status are main
sources of social identity for people. However, serious leisure can also provide a good
reputation and identity for the participants (Green and Jones, 2005).
P8: My whole life I’ve worked in volunteering, it was a part of our family culture; as children we
would often be working on community projects with my parents . . . as I went through high school . . .
I started a youth drop-in centre . . . I think the way my parents raised me was that if you have the
ability to help others, you must. . . . So, some just the culture I grew up in, some because they were
issues close to my heart.
P12. Well I’ll always be a weaver. You can never get away from that or a fibre based artist or
whatever you want to call it, people always know you about that.
4.2 Part two: information activities
Serious leisure is basically an information-intensive context in terms of the diversity and
richness of information sources (e.g. online repositories and printed materials) and
information activities (e.g. searching, browsing and sharing) – broadly described as
information phenomena (Hartel, 2006, 2019). These information related activities are typically
embedded into the various stages and aspects of serious leisure engagement (e.g. Hartel, 2003,
2006, 2010, 2014; Fulton, 2005; Prigoda and McKenzie, 2007; Lee and Trace, 2009; Case, 2010;
O’Connor, 2013; Hartel et al., 2016; Price and Robinson, 2017; Hill and Pecoskie, 2017; Lloyd
and Olsson, 2019). Moreover, in some arenas such as sports and performing arts (e.g. music or
dance), where the main activity is performed with the body, embodied information play a key
role (Cox et al., 2017; Cox, 2018; Lloyd and Olsson, 2019).
Serious leisure participants often need specific information to follow their interests and
they often passionately seek information about their hobbies and share the collected
information with their peers in their own communities of interest or via social media for the
larger audience in the public. As a result of this ongoing information seeking and sharing
practice, serious leisure contexts are commonly information rich. Moreover, as they are keen
to learn about their hobbies they normally visit information-rich hubs such as libraries,
archives and museums. Meanwhile they need to develop their personal information
management skills to organise the information they gather. As a result, they interact more
with information resources, develop various information seeking skills and are more active in
information sharing practice. The next section provides detailed findings about
informational aspects of serious leisure in this study.
4.2.1 Sources of information. The study’s findings identified a range of information
sources that participants typically use for their serious leisure purposes ranging from various
online resources and tools on the Web (e.g. search engines, websites and social media) to
public libraries, local newspapers and grey literature (e.g. government documents, flyers and
etc.). The popular information resources are very diverse in this context and they usually use
a combination of formal and informal resources both in the digital and print format.
P1: . . . most of the information we work on or get is through either a regional community radio
association . . . We get a lot of information from this Community Broadcasting Association to help us
on governance and that type of thing. But the bulk of the information we get to go forward is through
the community, what the community needs are and then to try and marry up the needs of the
community to our broadcast service.
P6: Because I had been away from Wagga; . . . and I came back and I did not have a great deal of
contacts, other than a few family members. So, yes, I . . . found out through the local paper.
Training was another source of information. Some of the participants have taken some
training course such as workshops to learn new skills and knowledge they need for their
serious leisure pursuits.
P1: I did a bit of training a couple of, 18 months training on actually broadcasting, radio
broadcasting. The bulk of what I do at the moment comes from my years as a senior executive in the
corporate world.
P3: And I have done training in, for the radio position. I did some accounting courses at university,
and so I do have a basic accounting understanding.
Based on the chosen hobby background knowledge is also usually useful for the participants.
They can use their work-related skills in the leisure time as well. For example, they might use
their business skills and expertise to manage their voluntary job.
P1: So it works well because I can bring a level of business skill and expertise to the, to what would be
by and large a community run identity and in return I get from that, the challenge of putting them on
the straight and narrow getting them lined up with strategies and then putting them into practice
and things like that.
P9. Sometimes you’ll get reports from people like the Royal Australian Historical Society, the Federal
Australian Historical Society, those sorts of things I’ll read and learn from. . . . It’s a very wide field,
but more and more of its online; it’s knowing where to access that and how to access.
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The findings show the form of this training course can be face-to-face or online courses. These
training courses provided them with both specific skills and knowledge they need to pursue
their serious leisure (e.g. family history researching, bonsai growing skills, aboriginal
heritage, culture and language) or general skills such as problem solving or time
management.
P9: I did a few online courses on basic family history researching. There’s a – you can do a course,
either with a university in Tasmania, or there’s one in Scotland, they’re both very popular. . . . I’ve
done one of those, and it was just a good little bit of background, but mostly, I just learn from
experience as I go.
P12: I think I’ve been training for it for my whole life it feels like it. But I have actually done the
graduate certificate in Wiradjuri heritage, culture and language.
P14: So we were involved in . . . which is a tree regeneration group and a desalination program there.
So it was working together with other farmers to try and solve the problem of a rising salt water level
in the soil and, so it involved being on the committee and talking with other people and problem
solving.
4.2.2 Information seeking. The participants seek information through various sources. They
usually prefer online information seeking because of its ease of access and the diversity of
resources in the online environment. Nonetheless, they still use libraries and print materials
for specific purposes.
P9: I am a big fan of getting online . . . the first thing I do is get online and start reading what I can
there, I’d use the library. . . . I go to their meetings, I get on their website, and they’ve got educational
programs that you can do online. For the Society, I read webpages of other societies, minutes of other
societies, I’ll Google how to make successful meetings, how to make a group successful, how to make
members satisfied and things like that. I’ll Google that sort of material.
P9. So, there’s a lot of online resources now, but then I use libraries, State Records, State Libraries –
yeah, all those things – people. So, I do a lot of interviews and first-hand primary sources.
4.2.3 Information sharing. The finding indicates information sharing is the most popular and
joyful information activity in this context. The participants use various methods for
information sharing which can be categorised into two groups as formal and informal
networks. The findings show that word of mouth has been one of the major sources of
information sharing in the community.
P1: Well going back about 17 years ago somebody was talking to me one day about how they were
doing a broadcast on the community radio and I said, “That’d be neat.” And so they said, “Oh we need
new presenters.” So I went along, . . . and had some training there and then went on air for, I did
breakfast radio for 10 years . . . it was word of mouth more than anything.
P9. . . . when I publish an article or a book, I’ll put it on the website, and I’ll publicise it through
Facebook, and I reach a much wider audience, and there’s no risk with cost, and I do not have to muck
around marketing or anything like that, so it’s just better all around.
P3: . . . it’s a very informal process, it’s really just a matter of approaching the organisation . . . it’s just
an informal contract, so I would suggest people do because you know you could tailor your own
involvement to suit yourself.
P3. Talking to people who are from out of Wagga and the fact that they were interested in the farm
and wanting to understand, because it’s a hydroponic farm . . ., which was quite a new thing for a lot
of people . . . I just enjoyed sharing my knowledge with people, and helping them to understand
better what was involved.
Social media is one of the main sources of access and sharing information for most of the
participants. Some of them publish what they learn during their journey of serious leisure.
P9: . . . that is personal satisfaction, and it provides a service, because people enjoy reading what I
produce. I just put the articles up online now, and they are readily available . . ., so I get to reach more
people through the medium of online, like Facebook, than if I were to publish them in hard copy.
Meanwhile, social networking plays an important role in enhancing social connectedness and
social inclusion to facilitate information sharing.
P6: So, normally it’s just talking about it . . . anyone there that knows anyone that wants any, you
know, say a home library thing, I – or this sort of thing, that’s where I get . . . most of the information.
I think it’s what they call, women networking.
P7: Okay, yeah I do a lot of research on the internet . . . so, network with people who have similar
interests in other areas. For example, I’ve reached out to the . . . society and learnt things off them and
I’ve also reached out to other bowling clubs, what they do, you know St Vincent De Paul shops, what
they do.
4.2.4 Information usage and producing. Some of the participants have been actively involved
in producing information about their serious leisure endeavours. A number of them have
already published a number of publications about their achievements.
P9: I’ve published – I cannot remember now, maybe six or seven books in hardcopy, and in the end I
decided that it wasn’t worth the risk of whether – I worried about whether I sold them and whether I
lost money on the deal and I’d have to market it, and now I’ve put them online, through Facebook and
through the Society’s webpage.
P16. As a club we publish a newsletter and I’ve published – I’ve written two articles for the newsletter
so far. It used to be just the president that would write the newsletter but we’ve had a bit of change in
how we’re organising the newsletter so in the last couple of years and now we’re getting our more
experienced members to also contribute . . . we’re all sharing our experiences that way through the
club newsletter.
4.3 Part three: motivations and barriers
The findings show the participants have various sources of motivation and inspiration
helping them to continue their passionate journey. These motivations are varied ranging
from connection with like-minded people to helping others. The collected data confirmed
participation in serious leisure activities can be very rewarding. The reward might be a
positive feedback from people or having a sense of fulfilment because of successful
contribution in a social project. The main motivations identified in the study include a
number of themes such as: pure pleasure, self-satisfaction, escaping loneliness, social
engagement, networking, altruism and benevolence.
P18. I just enjoyed. I enjoy art and I thought that would be something really valuable to do when I
have finished full time work. So that’s why I’ve got into it more. (Pure Pleasure)
P14. That is really fun . . . we do sing for various things there. We sing for Alliance Francaise, we sing
at . . . the Fusion Festival. . . . I just love to sing for the sake of singing so that’s probably my one
really selfish thing probably. (Self-satisfaction)
P6: Having returned from being away for so long, that’s the only way you’re going to get to know
people. And also, otherwise, if you do not do it, you’re sitting at home, looking at four walls and
probably going nuts, quite frankly. (Escaping loneliness)
P17. I’ve chosen to continue with cricket because I enjoy it, it’s a very social sport and it’s good to meet
people and make friends and all that kind of thing. (Social engagement)
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P10. When I came to Australia I learned about the clubs . . . I was new and I wanted to make friends,
so I went and joined a club, because I love it, but also as a way to have a new social network. (Social
networking)
Altruism and helping others is an important motivation for the participants. They can help
vulnerable people who are socially disadvantaged and try to improve their quality of life
through a voluntary job in public places or charities.
898
P9. I realise that what I do in that regard is important for a lot of other people, and it makes material
and things available to a lot of people, so it benefits the wider community, so I’m motivated by that.
(Altruism)
P12. I enjoyed working in that space but also too I could see it was improving the lives of others but
also too it was providing an opportunity to – not an opportunity, what’s the word? It was a way of
true reconciliation is when you walk side by side with one another and that’s what it felt like.
(Benevolence)
P6: The language cafe is a brilliant thing, because that brings in refugee and I think that helps them
maybe settle in the area as well . . . most of the things I do – even though I’m fairly busy, I make time
to do things like that, because I think they’re helping other people. So, it’s mentally stimulating for
me. (Helping others)
P7: . . . we’re doing oral history of people who are aged and for example, I’ve been going down to the
old person’s home and speaking to them there on tape and getting a bit of history of . . . I’ve got a lot
of positive feedback from that and with St Vincent De Paul just helping the socially disadvantaged.
(Positive feedback)
The findings is well-matched with previous research in terms of the social benefits of serious
leisure. The data showed the participants enjoy the social benefits of their serious leisure
activities very much.
P3: And I enjoy very much interacting with all the people who came to the shop, and especially those
who came as families, brought their children and wanted to pick their own strawberries . . . and
seeing the children have such a great time and understanding actually where some of their food came
from . . . also talking to people who are from out of Wagga and the fact that they were interested in
the farm.
P4: Well I mostly got involved with it because I wanted to meet other volunteers and I felt more
connected to the community.
Moreover, the findings revealed despite all the constructive aspects, this is not an entirely
cheerful story all the time and the participants face some difficulties and hardships. However,
it mainly depends on the nature of the activity. For example, a number of outdoor hobbies
such as cycling, bushwalking and gardening mainly depend on the weather condition and the
weather can be a hurdle for the participants during some periods of the year:
P3. . . . the only barrier might be weather. It’s either too hot or too wet or something.
P18. I suppose you have to be independent too – to have independence within your life situation and
have the time. So if you do not have the time and then you do not have the transport to get to
volunteering. I could see that would be more difficult and did not have the confidence to participate
they would be real barriers to participation – lack of confidence, lack of time.
Additionally, time pressure has always been an issue for most of the participants and it is
becoming more important in nowadays hectic life when most people complain about shortage
of time. In particularly, for some participants who work fulltime this is a bigger problem.
P16. I would like to spend more time on it but it’s hard to actually say because some seasons like
spring at the moment, tend to be a lot more intensive because the plants are actively growing
whereas through winter most of the plants are dormant . . . so, through the spring, summer months,
I’d probably been putting on average maybe 2, 3 hours a week but through the winter months you’d
be lucky to do an hour a week.
P3: Well it wasn’t so much a barrier but it was an impediment is that, when I offered my services to
the owners of the strawberry farm they came to rely on me quite heavily. And towards the end of the
season I was starting to think that I do not, I did not want to be devoting so much time.
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5. Discussion
The findings revealed that the participants in this study have been experiencing all the six
qualities of serious leisure during their long-term engagement with their hobbies or voluntary
jobs. As a result, their activities can be fully mapped onto the serious leisure perspective which
was the main theoretical framework of the study. The findings also reconfirmed that serious
leisure is a unique context in terms of the high level of intensity and huge diversity of
information phenomena. This outcome was also well-matched with the previous research in
this area (Lee and Trace, 2009; Savolainen, 2010; Cox and Blake, 2011; Hirsh et al., 2012;
Margree et al., 2014; Joseph, 2016; Olsson and Lloyd, 2017; Price and Robinson, 2017;
Bronstein and Lidor, 2020). All the participants actively seek, collect and share information to
pursue their interests. Apart from individual information seeking, sometimes they engage in
collective information practice (Prigoda and McKenzie, 2007) in their communities of interest
such as weaving groups or bonsai growing clubs in this study. Also, along with information
gathering and sharing, a few of them produce and publish information as well. What they do
at this stage is a good example of creating information in the pursuit of a hobby (Fulton, 2016).
Also, the findings confirmed they are passionate about their chosen activity and mostly
experience a joyful information seeking to satisfy their information needs. Moreover, looking
for information in this context is very much embedded in various activities they perform in
their leisure time. For example, when a beginner bonsai grower is learning basic skills of
bonsai growing (e.g. trimming, pruning and watering), she/he needs information to achieve
this goal. However, information seeking is embedded in the whole process and might remain
invisible for the person. Unless she/he reflects on the process. That is why at the end of the
interviews most participants were pleased because attending the interview provided then
with a chance to reflect on their experience. They felt amazed by the diversity of the
information activities they usually carry out without even noticing it, mainly because of the
enjoyment they experience in their hobbies.
Nonetheless, participation in serious leisure is not always joyful. Sometimes it can be
challenging in one way or another. The findings indicate that in some stages the participants
struggle to continue their engagement. This is an issue that needs to be explored in future
research because most studies in this area mainly focus on the positive aspects and ignore the
negative sides. There are a number of contextual elements that need to be considered. For
example, Orr (2006) reports that scholars overlook the issue of power and conflict in this
context. While, these elements play significant roles. For instance, when there are many
volunteers in an area of work, the professional staff might feel concerned that they might lose
their job in a long term. As a result of this concern, they might shift to an “us and them”
attitude and use their knowledge and expertise as a sources of power to limit the volunteers’
engagement.
However, the positive outcomes of serious leisure both in the personal and social levels
usually inspire the participants to maintain their involvement anyway. In particular, serious
leisure plays a key role in enhancing social engagement. This is more important for vulnerable
and isolated groups. Toepoel (2013) reports the oldest age group is the most socially isolated
group and contribution in cultural activities has the most significant impact in boosting
subjective measures of their social connectedness. Likewise, Cheng and Pegg (2016) report an
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enduring engagement with serious leisure provides a powerful sense of wellness, happiness
and a sense of worth for people. Moreover, serious leisure brings like-minded people together
when they can share their stories and work as team members in specific projects. These
activities establish a sense of community and boost social inclusion. Bronstein and Lidor (2020)
found that a group of music fans seek information to accomplish at least four main purposes
including the need for serious leisure, making social connections, having a sense of belonging
and forming an identity. Likewise, the findings of the present study suggest the participants
enjoy similar outcomes. They usually support one another in their communities of interests,
similar to what Savolainen (2010) reports about informational and emotional support in the
blogosphere.
The findings also revealed that the participants are among very good friends of public
libraries and they visit libraries regularly. Basically, libraries can support serious leisure and
can be a source of reliable information for them. Besides, public libraries are social hubs and
can provide people with facilities to advocate leisure activities. If we support serious leisure, it
will bring some benefits for public libraries such as creating communities of interest,
generating information grounds, enriching the library collections and promoting library
programs and events (Mansourian and Bannister, 2019). Furthermore, the serious leisure
perspective can be used by public libraries to audit their programing schedules (VanScoy et al.,
2020). Therefore, there are mutual benefits for both libraries and serious leisure participants.
6. Conclusion
This paper concludes that serious leisure is not only a source of personal satisfaction for the
participants, it also can provide them with a sense of purpose in a meaningful and joyful
journey towards self-actualization. It also can act like a social glue to keep people together in a
community of interest. At the same time, information seeking and sharing play a key role in
achieving these goals and the participants have a wide array of information sources and
information sharing networks. These channels are very diverse ranging from informal
networks (e.g. personal contacts, information grounds and social media) to formal resources
(e.g. books, magazines and newsletters). They also share information through these passages
with their peers in their communities of interests and various information grounds.
Nonetheless, they face a number of hinders from time to time which make their journey
difficult. Challenges such as time pressure and financial adversity are among the most
common problems. Nonetheless, as they truly enjoy their chosen activity they have some
coping strategies to overcome the difficulties.
In terms of further research, there are still many unexplored corners about human
information behaviour in this context. For example, our knowledge about the emotional
aspects of information activities in serious leisure is still limited. Thus, some
phenomenological studies based on the participants’ live experiences would be very
useful. Moreover, we still need to discover more about the tools and techniques that serious
leisure communities normally employ to produce and preserve information which gradually
shape new knowledge depositories and digital heritage around their hobbies. Further
research on these aspects of information phenomena in this context can shed light on the less
explored corners of this topic.
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Appendix
Data Collection tool: Interview Protocol
(1) What is/are the serious leisure activity/activities that you are involved in?
(2) How long have you been involved in this practice?
(3) How did you learn about it in the first place?
(4) In average how much time do you spend for your leisure weekly?
(5) What are your motivations to spend time in this context?
(6) What are your main sources of information?
(7) How do you usually search your required information for this hobby?
(8) Do you publish your stories and reflections about this hobby in any media?
(9) Are you member of a society or association related to this subject?
(10) Have you done any training for this activity?
(11) How do you categorise information related to this interest?
(12) What are your main achievements in this field so far?
(13) How do you share information about this interest?
(14) Do you use social media for sharing relevant information?
(15) What is the best advantage of spending time on this interest?
(16) What is your recommendation for people who would like to take part in this activity?
(17) What are your main barriers and obstacles in this context?
(18) How do you predict your future involvement in this field?
(19) Is there anything else that you would like to add?
About the author
Yazdan Mansourian is a lecturer in the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University (CSU)
in Australia. He received his PhD in Information Science from The University of Sheffield (2003–2006).
Yazdan has a BSc degree in Agricultural Engineering (1991–1995) from Guilan University and an MA
degree in LIS from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (1998–2001). During January 2007 to June 2017 he
was faculty member at Kharazmi University. Yazdan joined CSU in 2017 and currently his main
research interest is human information behaviour in serious leisure. He explores the role of joy in
engaging people with hobbies, amateurism and voluntary activities and how joyful leisure experiences
inspire the participants to seek, share and use information. Yazdan Mansourian can be contacted at:
ymansourian@csu.edu.au
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