History
Note: The history presented here is a sketch. A more detailed history of the serious leisure perspective (SLP) is available in chapter 6 of Stebbins (2007). The key terms used here are defined in the Basic Concepts section on this site.
The term serious leisure was born between 1973 and 1976 while Robert Stebbins was collecting data for what was to become his "fifteen-year project" of research on amateurs and professionals. Serious leisure is, in effect, a folk term. For, directly or indirectly, many of the amateur interviewees autobiographers (in the case of Stebbins' library study of classical musicians) decisively distanced themselves from the dominant conception of leisure as "simply a good time" (referred to below as casual leisure), doing so by underscoring the seriousness with which they approached their avocational passion. The first published reference to the concepts of serious and casual leisure appeared in Stebbins (1982).
The fifteen-year project, theoretically integrated in Stebbins (1992), consisted of studies of amateurs in archaeology, baseball, theater, and classical music and of amateurs and professionals in astronomy, entertainment magic, stand-up comedy, and Canadian football. The object of the overall Project was to amass exploratory data on two exemplars of each of the four subtypes of amateur (in art, science, sport, and entertainment). Stebbins collected data for these studies in Canada and the United States, mainly using participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
Publication of Amateurs, professionals, and serious leisure in 1992 signaled the culmination of the Project. It also served as the first stock-taking of the serious leisure part of the serious leisure perspective, as the first had developed to that time. And just as important, that occasion also dramatically highlighted the need to explore, in similar open-ended fashion, the other two types of serious leisure. Stebbins (1995) started this exploration with the hobbies, turning first to the liberal arts variety in a study of cultural tourism in New Orleans. A field study of barbershop singing (in Calgary) followed shortly thereafter (Stebbins, 1996a), which, as a hobby, is classifiable as activity participation. The first conceptual statement on volunteering from the serious leisure perspective appeared in Stebbins (1982); it was subsequently elaborated in Stebbins (1996b). This was followed by a participant-observer/semi-structured interview investigation of francophone volunteers in urban Alberta (Stebbins, 1998).
Casual leisure got its start in the SLP at the same time as serious leisure, but initially, serving only as a foil for the latter. A separate conceptual statement on it was written in 1997 (Stebbins, 1997). Central to that statement was the proposition that casual leisure is essentially and distinctively hedonic but not without its own substantial benefits (Stebbins, 2001b; Hutchinson & Kleiber, 2005). Casual leisure was given a far more prominent place in the developing Perspective in the second stock-taking (Stebbins, 2001a).
Project-based leisure joined the Perspective much more recently (Stebbins, 2005a). Stebbins's observation of an instance of it was truly serendipitous, but nonetheless sufficient to set in motion the wheels of conceptualization leading the 2005 conceptual statement. More work on hobbies by Stebbins (2005b, on nature-challenge activities) and several other scholars as well as their work on amateurs and volunteers, generated the need for yet another stock-taking. Stebbins (2007) accomplished this by organizing the entire area under the heading of the serious leisure perspective.
Meanwhile, the leisure-like nature of some forms of work has not gone unnoticed, as seen in the exploration of “occupational devotion” (Stebbins, 2004). Devotee work is essentially serious leisure that also amounts to a livelihood for the participant (see Basic Concepts page and, for a full explanation, Stebbins, in press). Together the three forms along with devotee work have evolved and coalesced into the typological map of the world of leisure presented in the Resources section on this site. That is, so far as is evident at present, all leisure (at least in Western society) can be classified as devotee work or one of the three forms and their several types and subtypes. More precisely the serious leisure perspective offers a classification and explanation of all leisure activity and experience, as these two are framed in the social psychological, social, cultural, and historical contexts in which the activity and experience take place.
The reader should not leave this history with the impression (quite easily gained from the foregoing) that research in and theorizing about the serious leisure perspective is a one-man show. It was at the start, to be sure, but by the mid-1980s other scholars were beginning to use the ideas available in their day to guide and explain their own research. Stebbins' two most recent stock-takings (Stebbins, 2001a; 2007) show just how many people have contributed, primarily empirically, to development of the Perspective. Indeed, without their collaboration, talk of a Perspective would be hollow, empirically wanting, and subject to accusations of intellectual imperialism on the part of its author.
That other scholars can contribute profoundly to the Perspective is dramatically evident in two major additions to it made by Daniel G. Yoder and James Gould. Yoder (1997) developed a model for commodity intensive serious leisure. His study of tournament bass fishing in the United States resulted in an important modification of the original professional-amateur-public (P-A-P) Model. He found, first, that fishers here are amateurs, not hobbyists, and second, that commodity producers serving both amateur and professional tournament fishers play a role significant enough to warrant changing the original triangular (P-A-P) system of relationships first set out in Stebbins (1979).
A scale measuring the rewards of serious leisure and its six distinguishing characteristics is now available for use by qualified researchers. James Gould is the principal author of this scale, which he named the "Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure," or SLIM. The 72-item scale -- this is its long form (there is also a 54-item short form) -- and its development are described in Gould, Moore, and Stebbins (2008). It is the product of Gould's doctoral thesis research conducted at Clemson University. He used a q-sort, an expert panel (e.g., Stebbins was frequently consulted on the validity of his proposed measures of various serious leisure concepts), and confirmatory factor analysis to develop the scale, which, using several different samples, he subsequently demonstrated to have acceptable fit, reliability, and equivalence. Shortly thereafter Tsaur and Liang (2008) published a shorter scale designed to measure only the six distinguishing characteristics.
Development of scales like the SLIM and that of Tsaur and Liang are evidence of theoretic maturity of the parts of the SLP they measure. It also stands as a model of the scientific process of research, wherein a field starts in exploration, develops inductively, and eventually matures by employing verificational procedures.
The first decade of the 21st century has been one of significant extension of the SLP into some 17 applied and pure disciplines and inter-disciplines. The Perspective now offers an important theoretic viewpoint for research and analysis in, among others, studies of tourism, therapeutic recreation, arts administration, nonprofit sector and voluntary action, and library and information science. See Stebbins (chap. 5, 2012) for a discussion of this development.
References
Gould, J., Moore, D., & Stebbins, R. A. (2008). Development of the Serious Leisure Inventory and Measure. Journal of Leisure Research, 40, 47-68.
Hutchinson, S. L., & Kleiber, D. A. (2005). Gifts of the ordinary: Casual leisure's contributions to health and well-being. World Leisure Journal, 47(3), 2-16.
Stebbins, R. A. (1979). Amateurs: On the margin between work and leisure. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Stebbins, R. A. (1982). Serious leisure: A conceptual statement. Pacific Sociological Review, 25, 251-272.
Stebbins, R. A. (1992). Amateurs, professionals and serious leisure. Montreal, QC : McGill-Queen's University Press.
Stebbins, R. A. (1995). The connoisseur's New Orleans. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.
Stebbins, R. A. (1996a). The barbershop singer: Inside the social world of a musical hobby. Toronto, ON : University of Toronto Press.
Stebbins, R. A. (1996b). Stebbins, R.A. (1996b). Volunteering: A serious leisure perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Quarterly, 25, 211-224.
Stebbins, R. A. (1997). Casual leisure: A conceptual statement. Leisure Studies, 16(1), 17-25.
Stebbins, R. A. (1998). The urban francophone volunteer: Searching for personal meaning and community growth in a linguistic minority. Vol. 3, No. 2 (New Scholars-New Visions in Canadian Studies quarterly monographs series). Seattle , WA: University of Washington, Canadian Studies Centre.
Stebbins, R. A. (2001a). New directions in the theory and research of serious leisure. Lewiston , New York : Edwin Mellen.
Stebbins, R. A. (2001b). The costs and benefits of hedonism: Some consequences of taking casual leisure seriously. Leisure Studies, 20, 305-309.
Stebbins, R. A. (2004). Between work and leisure: The common ground of two separate worlds. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Stebbins, R. A. (2005a). Project-based leisure: Theoretical neglect of a common use of free time. Leisure Studies, 24, 1-11.
Stebbins, R. A. (2005b). Challenging mountain nature: Risk, motive, and lifestyle in three hobbyist sports. Calgary, AB: Detselig.
Stebbins, R. A. (2007). Serious leisure: A perspective for our time. New Brunswick , NJ: Transaction.
Stebbins, R. A. (2012). The idea of leisure: First principles. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Tsaur, S-H., & Liang, Y-W. (2008). Serious leisure and recreation specialization. Leisure Sciences, 30(4), 325-341.
Yoder, D. G. (1997). A model for commodity intensive serious leisure. Journal of Leisure Research, 29, 407-429.
