What are the essential research methods for students studying leisure, sport, and tourism? What are the main benefits in competing research methods, and how can you avoid gremlins in the research process? This is a comprehensive and informative book written especially for new and inexperienced researchers in the fields of leisure, sport, and tourism. Unlike generic research texts that do not â€~speak' to people in this field, this richly flavored book immediately engages the reader by using subject-specific examples and explaining the central methodological issues in straightforward terms. By showing students what they can do to assess, manage, and reduce the time they spend on research Researching in Leisure, Sport and Tourism: The Essential Guide will help them achieve a better balance in their course work. It will quickly establish itself as the key methods guide in the field.
A unique, international resource for Leisure Studies: in one volume the history, organization and central debates in the field of Leisure Studies are defined, providing a one-stop-shop for students and an agenda for future debate and research academics.
Describing the fundamental elements of research methods for leisure, recreation and tourism, this new edition of a popular textbook is updated throughout. It covers the measurement of variables, sampling, questionnaire design and evaluation methods, and also a wider discussion of writing proposals, communicating research findings, cross-cultural research, and the use of new technologies in conducting research. Written by internationally renowned researchers in an accessible style, this book introduces both undergraduate and graduate students to the vital skills they will need to succeed in the leisure, recreation, tourism and hospitality industries.
Serious Leisure offers a comprehensive view and analysis of the current state of the sociology of leisure. Defining and differentiating the way people use their free time, Stebbins divides such activity into categories of serious, casual, and project-based leisure that he further separates into a variety of types and subtypes. Together they comprise what he calls "serious leisure." In this perspective, serious leisure constitutes systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial and interesting in nature and requiring special skills, knowledge, and experience. Casual leisure, though immediately, intrinsically rewarding, is by contrast a relatively short-lived pleasurable activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure is a short-term, reasonably complicated, occasional creative undertaking carried out in free time. Stebbins sets out the basic concepts and propositions that make up the three forms, focusing on their essential elements. He takes stock of the serious leisure literature as well as that for casual and project-based leisure. Stebbins sees "serious leisure" realized by way of a set of foundational concepts--organization, community, history, lifestyle, and culture--and several of their component areas. He reviews the history and background of the concept of serious leisure and then adds historical commentary on, first, casual leisure and, then, project-based leisure. Finally, he examines the future and the importance of the serious leisure perspective in a globalizing world, and some of its critical links with other fields of knowledge and practice, notably the nonprofit sector and preventive medicine. Together with its original insights, Serious Leisure offers a single, handy, coherent, comprehensive resource. It will be of interest to sociologists, labor studies specialists, and economists.
The Value of Events fills an important niche in the literature on events, being the first book to comprehensively deal with the subject of value creation and measurement, as opposed to impact assessment and programme evaluation. Value creation and measurement is often done routinely from specific perspectives such as tourism, event management, corporate marketing, or customer satisfaction. However, there exist a number of discourses on value and evaluation that have not yet received adequate attention, including the justification of governmental intervention and the costs and benefits of hosting major events. This edited book, written by an international group of academics with expertise in the relevant fields of events, tourism, sport and culture, offers new insight into events and their relationship to sustainability, social responsibility, cultural and social value. Fostering debate in the context of conceptual thinking, philosophising, multiple stakeholder perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches, it challenges the events industry, students, policy-makers and strategists with new perspectives on value, with implications for impact forecasting and assessment. This is a book for all students pursuing degrees in fields where planned events are important topics, while being of great interest to researchers, policy-makers, evaluators and organisers/managers of planned events. Within a subject in need of further attention, The Value of Events offers the most comprehensive overview of event value to date.
Multispecies Leisure: Human-Animal Interactions in Leisure Landscapes seeks to ‘bring the animal in’ to the leisure studies domain and contribute to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, interwoven multispecies phenomenon. The emerging multidisciplinary field of human-animal studies encourages researchers to move beyond narrow focus on human-centric practices and ways of being in the world, and to recognise that human and non-human beings are positioned within shared ecological, social, cultural and political spaces. With some exceptions, leisure studies has been slow to embrace the ‘animal turn’ and consider how leisure actions, experiences and landscapes are shaped through multispecies encounters between humans, other animals, birds and insects, plants and environment. This book begins to address this gap by presenting research that considers leisure as more-than-human experiences. The authors consider leisure with nonhuman others (e.g. dogs, horses), affecting those others (e.g. environmental concerns) and affected by the non-human (e.g. landscape, weather), by exploring the ‘contact zones’ between humans and other species. Thus, this work contributes to greater understanding of leisure as a complex, multispecies phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a Special Issue of the Leisure Studies.
The social psychology of leisure has long been, and still remains, a prominent perspective for understanding the role and impact of leisure in peoples lives. It is a dynamic field influenced by researchers in leisure studies and theories and research in, among others, the fields of social, personality, developmental, and positive psychology. An early systematic effort to examine the potential of social psychology for understanding leisure was provided by John Neulinger in his 1974 book, The Psychology of Leisure: Research Approaches to the Study of Leisure. In 1980, Seppo Iso-Ahola published The Social Psychology of Leisure and Recreation, the first textbook to map out the boundaries of the field and review the social psychological theory and research available at the time. Seventeen years elapsed before the first edition of A Social Psychology of Leisure was published in 1997. The first edition was well received, used in classrooms around the world, often cited by other researchers, and translated into Japanese. Another 14 years elapsed before the second editionwith Gordon Walker being added as a co-authorwas published in 2011. It too was well received, used globally, often cited, and, in this instance, translated into Chinese. This new edition builds on these earlier efforts and incorporates major new topics of research, innovative studies, and contemporary examples. It also advances from the second edition in several important ways. First, it takes into account recent trends in psychology, such as the rise of positive psychology, evolutionary social psychology, and the social psychological treatment of culture (see Chapter 2). Second, it provides a more comprehensive overview of the diverse range of experiences that take place in leisure (see Chapter 4). Third, we have changed the focus of later chapters from benefits to outcomes, recognizing that leisure behavior may be both beneficial and harmful at times. And fourth, rather than have a separate chapter on age and gender, we have integrated material on these two topics throughout the third edition. These differences notwithstanding, we have continued with the general orientation that the social psychology of leisure is concerned with how people come to perceive time or behavior as free or discretionary, how they choose to fill and structure this discretionary time with behavior and experience, why they make these choices, and the implications of these choices for their happiness and personal growth. Important here, however, is that the social psychology of leisure recognizes that these perceptions and choices are influenced by other people and by experiences in the other domains of life such as work, family, and community. A Social Psychology of Leisure is written to serve as a textbook for undergraduate students taking a course in the psychological and social aspects of leisure and recreation. It also provides for students in graduate courses a comprehensive introduction that should be supplemented by books and journal articles focusing on specific topics. Finally, especially as it has incorporated reference to newer literature, this edition is intended to serve as a source-book for leisure researchers in providing context and even direction when conducting studies that employ a social psychological approach. Given the last, in this edition each chapter has its own reference list rather than there being a single, comprehensive list as in the past. This modification reflects a recent trend in how researchers, who are typically interested in a specific topic or area, now access and utilize scholarly information. Many years of teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in this area have provided a testing ground for much of the material and the methods of presentation that appear in this book. Consequently, we have tried to maximize the clarity and interest level of the text. Many concrete examples are used, and where appropriate, topics are introduced through the use of scenarios highlighting various types of leisure behavior for students to analyze. We also pose interesting leisure questions often found in the readers own daily life and then demonstrating how researchers have attempted to answer these same questions. By doing the above, we hope to demonstrate the relevance, excitement, and methods of social psychological leisure research. Finally, as in past editions, we discuss the potential applicability of the research reviewed. In some cases, these applications will have immediate implications for the provision of public and private leisure services in communities, tourism, park management, and private recreation businesses. However, there is another sense in which the book is applied. Not only can the information provided by a social psychology of leisure be used to more effectively plan leisure services, but also individuals, through an awareness of the social psychological dimensions of leisure, may be able to extend more control over their lives and better enjoy their own leisure. To this end, readers will constantly be asked to reflect on their own experiences and their personal observations of other people at leisure.
This book updates and expands Jackson and Burtons "Mapping the Past, Charting the Future" (1989) and "Leisure Studies: Prospects for the Twenty-First Century" (1999). The need to do so was driven by the significant new developments in the leisure studies field as well as the arrival of new and upcoming experts in specific areas of study. The book features new sections on: Disciplinary Perspectives (including chapters on anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, and economics of leisure); Cognate Area Perspectives (including chapters on leisure, health, and physical activity; leisure and religion/spirituality; sport as leisure; and tourism); International Perspectives (including chapters on leisure in Africa, Australia and New Zealand, East Asia, Europe, Latin America); Diverse Perspectives (including chapters on leisure in terms of youth, family, older adults, immigrants, racial and ethnic groups, the LGBQ community; and people with disabilities). Other book chapters focus on leisure theory; leisure, time, and technology; leisure needs, motivations, and constraints; leisure, place, and social capital; leisure planning, marketing, and management; leisure research methods; and the future of the leisure studies field. Approximately 80% of each chapter summarises the current state of that specific leisure concept, topic, or area, while the remaining 20% dares to speculate imaginatively about where it could (and should) proceed in the future. Both summary and speculation are limited to approximately 6,000 words, as chapter authors were instructed to heed French philosopher Blaise Pascals (1656) oft-cited apology that I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter. While the book maintains the spirit and rigour of Jackson and Burtons earlier books, it also reflects the growth and maturity that has subsequently occurred in the leisure studies field.
Offering readers the most complete and authoritative critical introduction to Leisure Theory and written by one of the major figures in the field, the book provides an exciting and reliable guide to leisure forms, leisure practice and the representation of leisure. It demonstrates how power relations influence leisure choices and introduces students to the primary functions and regulative mechanisms of leisure, providing a thought provoking account of the central problems confronting students of leisure today. Written with the needs of students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in mind, the book will quickly be recognized as the bible for Leisure Theory.
This timely and significant book explores the characteristics and complexities of Asian urban tourism, considering the extent to which Western paradigms can be transferred to Asian settings and the striking contrasts that exist within the region. In an era of unprecedented urban expansion in Asian cities, this book comes at a time of great urgency, illuminating the possible problems and opportunities that arise when a destination emerges as a tourism hotspot. Split into three parts; introducing Asian urban tourism and urbanization, the management and marketing of Asian cities, and emerging trends and issues associated with Asian urban tourism, the book offers a range of varying and vibrant perspectives from international and interdisciplinary experts in the field. Chapters include studies on a wide range of destinations such as Hong Kong, Macau, Cambodia, Phuket, Kolkata, Busan, Delhi, and Sri Lanka among many others, and explore crucial contemporary themes such as overtourism, urbanization and administrative challenges, world heritage, smart cities and the use of technologies such as VR in urban tourism experience creation. It will be a vital resource for upper-level students, researchers, and academics in tourism, city tourism, Asian studies, development studies, cultural studies, and sustainability, as well as professionals in the field of tourism management.
