Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between engagement in arts, culture and sport, and subjective well-being, contributing to our understanding of the leisure experience, and cultural value, of these activities. Ordered probit analysis of UK data from wave 2 (2010–2011) of Understanding Society provides evidence in support of a wide range of cultural goods generating positive leisure experience, reflected in overall (life, general happiness) and domain (leisure) satisfaction. Frequency of engagement is central to certain activities: only regular participation in arts activities and sport generates positive effects. In contrast, arts events are positive irrespective of frequency. The findings also indicate even less frequent engagement in activities exhibiting cultural characteristics, e.g. museums/historical sites, has positive association with satisfaction. Finally, although employment has a negative association with leisure satisfaction, engagement in leisure activities is not found to spillover into job satisfaction (with the exception of certain sports). This suggests individuals consider work and leisure (including quality of leisure time) separately.
Highlights
This paper explores participation and engagement in arts, cultural and sporting activities, reflecting on the leisure experience, and cultural value, of these activities with reference to UK subjective well-being (SWB) data
This paper explores the relationship between engagement in arts, culture and sport, and subjective well-being, contributing to our understanding of the leisure experience, and cultural value, of these activities
Control variables have been selected based on the findings presented in the SWB literature, including (1) personal characteristics such as gender (Garcia et al 2007; Philp and Wheatley 2011), age (Blanchflower and Oswald 2008), disability (Lucas 2007); (2) elements of time use, including working hours and overtime (Ateca-Amestoy et al 2008; Philp and Wheatley 2011); (3) relationships, for example the presence of dependent children (Garcia et al 2007) which is separated into four age categories to allow consideration of the effects of school-age children; (4) social development characteristics including education (Dolan et al 2008) and economic activity (Frey and Stutzer 2002); and (5) income which has been the focus of a significant portion of research within economics linked to welfare
Summary
This paper explores participation and engagement in arts, cultural and sporting activities, reflecting on the leisure experience, and cultural value, of these activities with reference to UK subjective well-being (SWB) data. The extant literature has centred on improving our understanding of: (1) what individuals value and; (2) the factors affecting their well-being (see Clark et al 2008; Dolan et al 2008; MacKerron 2012) This body of literature has been partly driven by acknowledgement of the limitations of relying solely on economic data, including gross domestic product, which is arguably the single most important economic statistic in public discourse, as measures of welfare (Hicks et al 2013: 74). There has been a significant public debate about the role of gross domestic product and its profile in policy making processes, prompting attempts to construct alternative measures of economic performance and well-being: the UK Office for National Statistics reports on well-being
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