Abstract
Under the continuous spread of COVID-19 infection, individuals are finding their own ways to manage their stress and subjective wellbeing. The main objective of this research is to test the role of leisure life satisfaction on one’s subjective wellbeing in the era of COVID-19 as mediated by stress relief. Individuals’ satisfaction with leisure life is hypothesized to both directly and indirectly affect their subjective wellbeing as mediated by relieved stress. The positive impact of stress relief on one’s subjective wellbeing is hypothesized to be moderated by the perceived seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from a large-scale social survey in South Korea (N = 40,085) were used to test the hypotheses and the results confirmed them. Theoretical and managerial implications that stress the importance of the strategic management of one’s leisure life are discussed.
Highlights
Life consists of multiple domains including the work and family domains [1,2,3], and the satisfaction in each domain can affect the overall quality of life [4,5,6]
In addition to the DRAMMA model [23,25], we introduce the job demands-resource theory [26,27] and other occupational health literature to explain the significance of stress relief in the context of leisure life satisfaction and wellbeing
These results collectively demonstrate that survey participants do engage in passive forms of leisure activity given COVID-19 pandemic situations
Summary
Life consists of multiple domains including the work and family domains [1,2,3], and the satisfaction in each domain can affect the overall quality of life [4,5,6]. Scholars examined how leisure life satisfaction can increase subjective wellbeing [17] and have proposed various explanations for why leisure life satisfaction could enhance subjective wellbeing [18]. Sirgy and his colleagues proposed that leisure increases wellbeing because it can provide several benefits such as meeting sensory needs, safety needs, and mastery needs [19]. Csikszentmihalyi [20] highlighted the effect of flow experiences on life satisfaction and that leisure activities often provide individuals opportunities to engage themselves in serious, deeply demanding effort which transports them to a flow state. Newman et al [23] systematically summarized the benefits of leisure
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