Leisure Consumption Research Articles

Leisure property trends: Consumer spending and leisure futures

This paper brings together evidence and data from recently published material to provide an overview of current thinking on leisure consumer trends and their implications for leisure property. The paper looks at: UK consumer spending trends in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks; expectations for economic growth over the short and medium term; and latest thinking about trends that will shape leisure preferences, lifestyles and destinations in the long term.

Markups, Gaps, and the Welfare Costs of Business Fluctuations

We present a simple theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency: the gap between the marginal product of labor and the household's consumption leisure tradeoff. We show that this indicator corresponds to the reciprocal of the markup of price over social marginal cost, and give some evidence in support of this interpretation. We then show that, with some auxiliary assumptions, our gap variable may be used to measure the efficiency costs of business fluctuations. We find that the latter costs are modest on average. However, to the extent that the flexible price equilibrium is distorted, the gross efficiency losses from recessions and gains from booms may be large. Indeed, we find that the major recessions involved large efficiency losses. These results hold for reasonable parameterizations of the Frisch elasticity of labor supply, the relative risk aversion, and steady-state distortions.

Leisure property trends: Consumer markets and behaviour

Against a background of growing fears about a US-led global recession, this paper examines the latest UK data on consumers' expenditure, as an indicator of the overall health of the leisure consumer market. Key differences from the overall picture are identified for those activities that are typically found in commercial leisure properties. It is then argued that quantitative trends in consumer expenditure need to be viewed alongside evolving patterns of consumer behaviour, which will influence how and where consumers decide to spend money on leisure activities in the future.

Conceptualising State‐Controlled Resort Islands for an Environment‐Friendly Development of Tourism: The Maldivian Experience

The Maldives host a sophisticated and competitive international tourist industry which has replaced fishing as the dominant economic activity. With their rich tropical reef ecosystems and the abundant biodiversity of their marine environment, a total of 86 uninhabited islands had been converted into Resort Islands by the end of 2000. Resort Islands are equipped with comprehensive facilities for accommodation, food, recreation and leisure. They are also strictly reserved for foreign tourists and guarantee complete privacy. This gives the benefit of averting conflicts of acculturation with local islanders. In the arena of impacts on the physical environment, however, the consumptive leisure lifestyle of the tourists has been harmful to the Resort Islands as seen in sewage, garbage and waste pollution, as well as reef destruction and beach erosion. While the government of the Maldives takes great effort to harmonise tourism and the environment, the growth of mass tourism in the last 20 years has engendered grave environmental impacts. For future sustainable development of the Resort Islands, the tourists' environmental awareness must be increased to promote greater responsibility for the protection of the fragile coral and reef ecosystems of the Maldives.

Consumption–leisure choice with habit formation

In an intertemporal consumption–leisure choice model with wage uncertainty, and habit-forming consumption, we have shown that, consumption and leisure do move in opposite directions, consistent with the observed pro-cyclicy of aggregate hours worked.

Now it's 2000: Trends in doing and being in the new millennium

From the middle of the twentieth century the year 2000 has been a metaphor for the future. But now the magic year has arrived and we have the opportunity to retrospectively assess forecasts made last century. This paper uses information from Australian time use surveys to examine the predictions made in 1983 by Jonathon Gershuny. Gershuny proposes that households have a hierarchy of needs and wants that they wish to satisfy. As societies get richer they devote a smaller proportion of their national incomes to satisfying the more basic needs, and a larger share to the more sophisticated, luxury categories. However, over time, there is an increasing gap in the relative market prices of durable goods and luxury final services. This means that final services bought on the market (such as opera tickets, theatre tickets, even movie tickets) become more expensive compared to the cost of producing these services at home using relatively inexpensive appliances (e.g. stereo sound systems, video recorders and so on). In other words households turn to ‘self‐service’. On this basis, Gershuny predicts a decline in time devoted to paid work and an increase in time spent in unpaid work and in leisure consumption. Fortunately, however, time spent in unpaid work is itself reduced by the increasing productivity of domestic appliance (durables) and an increasingly equitable division of domestic labour. The net result is a society of greater leisure. This paper argues that Gershuny's predictions have gone astray because of two key weaknesses ‐ his failure to consider the effect of labour demand on the distribution of hours of paid work and his neglect of bargaining over the domestic division of labour.

Golden Times for Golden Agers: Selling Holidays as Lifestyle for the Over 50s

With the lowering of retirement age, a new group of consumers of leisure has emerged. The tourist industry has responded by offering holidays for the over 50s or holidays for ‘the 50-plus lifestyle’. This paper first looks at the discursive packaging of these holidays in brochures widely available in the U.K., using a broadly critical discourse analysis framework (e.g., Fairclough, 1995). The dilemmas of characterizing the target group and the holidays in these texts are examined and linked with the notions of ageism, anti-ageism, and the denial of aging. Second, through the analysis of 2 extracts of spoken discourse between travel agency staff and older clients, I show how the selling and buying of these holidays involves potentially problematic age-salient positioning of the client. The dialectics of autonomy vs. connection and independence vs. dependence in later life underlie both the written and the spoken texts under examination.

The marketing of gambling on the Internet

It is estimated that gambling on the Internet will be worth as much as $3bn by 2001. Gambling via interactive technology is already underpinned by two recent changes in consumer behaviour. First, increasing familiarisation with interactive technology and second, by changes in the way the gambling market operates. These already changing behaviour patterns, signal the success drivers on which gambling on the internet can build. The implications of this new leisure consumption pattern are discussed and the paper concludes that the synergy between marketing gambling and technology will transform the production and consumption of gambling.

An intertemporal consumption–leisure model with non-expected utility

This paper tests an intertemporal consumption–leisure model with non-expected utility. There is evidence to reject the commonly used expected-utility specification and to accept the non-expected utility one as the model’s restrictions are not rejected by the data.

Regulating Time, Regulating Society: Control and Colonisation in the Sphere of Public Leisure Provision

In this paper, we seek to review state reconstruction of public sector leisure provision in the UK. We suggest that there is a need to consider more fully the role (and similar reconstruction) of the individual as leisure consumer. In doing this, we question the constructions of both the “modern” state and of the notion of free” time. Adopting a regulationist approach, we suggest that analyses of the state and free-time should be shifted from an organizational focus to one based on exchange. In locating this shift firmly within the wider processes of post-modernization, we argue that the state, in seeking new strategies for the regulation of capital accumulation, has sought to blur the work/leisure dichotomy by commoditising free-time and leisure space. This has involved relocating social distinction away from work, towards the ability to convert time into money, and money into certain prescribed leisure and cultural activities.

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism.

Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Eva I1louz. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1997. 371 pp. ISBN 0-520-20275-9. $45.00 cloth. Time was in Western culture when marriage was unabashedly an economic transaction between families as much as a social bond between husband and wife. Love was seen, at best, as something that would grow within the marriage over time and, at worst, as a chaotic force disrupting the social order. Sure, some people still marry for money, but a lot has changed. The marriage contract has become largely a formal public marking of a couple's private love, and it holds only while love remains, quaint vows of unto death do us part notwithstanding. This widely known narrative in which love expels market considerations from courtship contains elements of truth. But as Eva Illouz shows in her important new book, aspects of the marketplace-from shopping and advertising to social class-still permeate contemporary romance. Illouz's work is a wide-ranging exploration of the relationship among the market, love, romance, courtship, and marriage. Given the rise of a world consumer culture, this is a crucial topic. Her book includes both a historical account as well as an extensive empirical, qualitative study of contemporary American culture. Illouz was trained in the French sociological tradition and frames much of her discussion around debates over postmodernism, as well as Bourdieu's ideas about social class. Because she avoids oversimplifications and tends to interrogate an issue rather than present a linear argument, her work cannot be readily summarized. This can cause frustration. I sometimes found myself enjoying a chapter only to come up empty handed when I searched for take-aways after completing it. This problem is particularly acute in the early chapters. I encourage readers to plug through, for the book gets consistently better as it goes along. The title, Consuming the Romantic Utopia, reflects Illouz's claim that romance is a secular ritual that brings two sacred into our everyday lives. By utopias, Illouz means experiences that temporarily reconcile our economic and social conflicts. The first of these utopias is represented by images of opulence and nonutilitarian luxury (e.g., the candle-lit dinner) that remove the couple from profane concerns of daily life and unite them in a reverie of consumption. The second utopia also removes the couple from everyday life, but this time it places them in wild and exotic nature, strolling hand in hand down an isolated tropical beach. Thus, leisure consumption and images of romance are densely intertwined. Romance is constructed in our culture as not just a good time, but a ritual rejuvenation of a couple's romantic spirit. Illouz pays particular attention to issues of social class. In one interesting finding, she reveals that respondents with high cultural capital tend to reject stories of spontaneous and passionate romantic love as phony and often unhealthy constructions of mass media. Yet, when asked to talk about romantic events in their own lives, these same educated respondents were the most likely to tell stories that closely conformed to romantic cultural scripts. …

Performance and the service encounter: an exploration of narrative expectations and relationship management in the outdoor leisure market

This study of rockclimbers and outdoor leisure consumers, manufacturers and retailers, sets out to discover the nature and outcomes of the consumer/producer relationship centred around the retail setting. Initial theoretical views on the self, participant role, performance and communitas are explored as a background to the discussion. Data collection involved participant observation, in‐depth interviews and a study of both commercially and consumer generated secondary materials (climbing club literature for example). The researchers identified an environment in which temporary leisure identities were supported and at times modified by the retail relationships and were embedded in a rich sub‐cultural narrative. Postmodern concepts pertaining to the consumption of place and space corresponded with the observational data, to the extent that recommendations for retailers are less overtly managerial, and more about facilitating the consumer’s ownership of the spaces and relationships within them.

The future for direct retailing of travel and tourism products: the influence of information technology

The steady improvement in the quantity of information which can be delivered to a remote computer terminal and in the sophistication with which it can be manipulated, together with the continued drop in cost of information technology, may have dramatic effects on the way business is conducted in the travel and tourism industries (including hospitality). Today, direct purchase of travel by electronic means is a practical possibility. The research reported here explores the prospects for direct retailing by electronic means, and the implications for the industry of this. It includes the results of a survey of senior people in the UK travel and tourism industry and its suppliers, carried out in 1995. The paper concludes that the most rapid changes will be in the business travel market, followed by the market for single components of travel (e.g. an airfare or a hotel booking). Changes in other markets will be slower. These changes represent both threats and opportunities for the industry. The number of high-street travel agents can be expected to fall, but there will remain an important role for those who can provide a high-quality service to business and leisure consumers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gambling and the American Economy

Some form of commercial gambling is legal in almost every state of the Union, reflecting substantial consumer demand for these activities. Yet gambling is regarded by policymakers, the media, and the public as an industry that is different and not subject to the economic laws that govern other industries. However, by examining gambling through standard measures such as consumer spending expressed as percentages of personal income, job creation, and gambling privilege tax receipts, it can be determined that gambling industries are not operating independently of the larger economic context. One of the fastest-growing sectors of the general economy, gambling accounts for about 10 percent of leisure expenditures.

Gendered cities: women and public leisure space in the ‘postmodern city’

This paper focuses on women's leisure in city urban space. It draws on feminist discourses around ‘difference’ and cultural geography that explores public space as a gendered, sexualized and racialized arena. Empirically the paper discusses two case studies of women's leisure in the city: older women and ‘young’ mothers including a specific sample of South Asian mothers. The research suggests that although there is an obvious plurality of meanings attached to leisure and a plurality of sites where this takes place, thus providing evidence of the fragmentation of women's experiences, there remain a combination of structural factors that have varying influences on women's leisure opportunities in an urban context. The challenge for leisure studies is to complement its already multidisciplinary base by drawing on work that opens up the complexities of space, not merely in the recognition of ‘new’ lifestyles and the conspicuous consumption of leisure but also, as a site for the maintenance and reproduction of complex power relations, in this instance, primarily those of gender and ‘race’.

Chances, Trances, And Lots Of Slots: Gambling Motives And Consumption Experiences

Why do gamblers spend their leisure time and money on gambling? The motives of gamblers are explored using data collected in a casino via ethnographic participant observation. The interpretation presented here combines data with insights from prior research and theories of gambling and experiential consumption. Gambling motives are presented in a three-dimensional typology showing that motives for consuming gambling experiences include learning and evaluating, seeking a “rush”, self-definition, risk-taking, cognitive selfclassification, emotional self-classification, competing, and communing. The research thus advances understanding of gambling beyond previously hypothesized economic, symbolic, and hedonic motives. Although created in a gambling domain, the typology presented has more general implications for how leisure consumption is treated both theoretically and empirically in future research.

The Frame of Reference as a Public Good

Does consuming more goods make people happier? For a broad spectrum of goods, available evidence suggests that beyond some point the answer is essentially no. Much of this evidence is from the large and growing scientific literature on the determinants of life‐satisfaction and psychological well‐being.1 Evidence from this literature also suggests, however, that there are ways of spending time and money that do have the potential to increase people's satisfaction with their lives, and herein lies a message of considerable importance for policy‐makers. The psychologist's conception of human well‐being is somewhat different from the economist's. Economists speak of an individual's utility, which in traditional economic models is assumed to be an increasing function of present and future consumption of goods, leisure, and other amenities that people typically view as desirable. Faced with a limited income, the individual is assumed to choose among alternatives so as to maximise her utility. The analogous construct in the psychological literature is ‘subjective well‐being’, a composite measure of life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect.

The Frame of Reference as a Public Good

Does consuming more goods make people happier? For a broad spectrum of goods, available evidence suggests that beyond some point the answer is essentially no. Much of this evidence is from the large and growing scientific literature on the determinants of life‐satisfaction and psychological well‐being.1 Evidence from this literature also suggests, however, that there are ways of spending time and money that do have the potential to increase people's satisfaction with their lives, and herein lies a message of considerable importance for policy‐makers. The psychologist's conception of human well‐being is somewhat different from the economist's. Economists speak of an individual's utility, which in traditional economic models is assumed to be an increasing function of present and future consumption of goods, leisure, and other amenities that people typically view as desirable. Faced with a limited income, the individual is assumed to choose among alternatives so as to maximise her utility....

Introducing Household Production in Collective Models of Labor Supply

In a recent paper (Chiappori 1992), I proposed a model of labor supply based on a representation of household behavior. In this framework, each household member is characterized by his or her own utility function, and decisions are only assumed to result in Pareto-efficient outcomes. I showed that these simple assumptions were sufficient to (i) generate testable restrictions on labor supply functions and (ii) recover individual preferences and the outcome of the decision process from observed behavior. For the sake of simplicity, the results were derived in the simplest possible case, namely, a static labor supply model with private consumptions. Such a framework was appropriate only for the purpose of the paper, that is, a preliminary exploration of the properties of collective models of labor supply. The next step is to evaluate the robustness of the results to various extensions of the basic model. This opens a general research program and generates a wide range of particular problems that it is hoped will be considered in the future. Among the most serious shortcomings of the 1992 model is the absence of household production: as in most labor supply models, agents were assumed to divide their time between market activities and leisure. As Apps and Rees (1997, in this issue) very rightly point out in their comment, the absence of domestic production is far from innocuous as soon as welfare issues are considered. For instance, a low level of market labor supply will automatically be interpreted as a large consumption of leisure, whereas it may in fact reflect the specialization of one of the members in domestic

The rise of the German and the demise of the English spa industry: a critical analysis of business success and failure

This paper develops a critical and comparative analysis of the growth and demise of the spa industry in the two contrasting European business environments. These are, first, those market oriented systems of Anglo-Saxon capitalism developed during the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century and, secondly, those systems of state-managed German capitalism developed during the industrial transformation of middle Europe in the 19th century. The paper highlights the fact that, while England witnessed the pioneering development of the modern spa resort, this industry failed to maintain its market position in the face of growing German competition. The paper critically evaluates conventional explanations for this decline which suggest that it was the inevitable consequence of the rise in fashionability of the English seaside resorts, and proposes an alternative explanation. This clearly indicates that English structures of capitalism were ill-adapted to facilitate the levels of planning, investment, control and innovation which were keys to the success of the German spa industry. Thus, in contrast with the English pioneering resorts which were primarily market led and private sector speculations, the German system of statemanaged capitalism produced a well resourced, innovative and attractive series of modern resort destinations. Until 1914 they attracted the patronage of an international elite, including English monarchs who were the lineal descendants of those Georgian kings who had once patronized the English pioneering innovation, the spa resorts of conspicuous leisure consumption.