A study of casual and serious golfers: Testing serious leisure theory

The purposes of this study were: (1) to test if the characteristics of serious golfers are the same as the characteristics of Stebbins' serious leisure theory; (2) to explore the theoretical structure of casual golfers' characteristics; (3) to investigate the differences of the characteristics of serious golfers among different levels of leisure involvement and demographic variables. The subjects were 292 golfers who played at nine golf courses at Oklahoma. The instrument of this study was SLIM short form which was developed by Gould in 2005. Participants who scored equal to or greater than six and a half averagely were classified into serious golfer group, while participants who scored less than six and a half were classified into casual golfer group. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test if the characteristics of serious golfers are the same as the characteristics of Stebbins' serious leisure theory, while Exploratory Factor Analysis was applied to explore the theoretical structure of casual golfers' characteristics. In the end, either t-test or ANOVA was used to investigate the differences of the characteristics of serious golfers among different levels of leisure involvement and demographic variables. The findings of this study suggested: (1) the characteristics of serious golfers are the same as the characteristics of Stebbins' serious theory; (2) characteristics of casual golfers could be categorized into five theoretical factors which are "Enjoy Recreation Activities toward Career Progress", "Self-Satisfaction and Enrichment through Unique Identity", "Group Achievements and Maintenances", "Benefits received from Self-Express and Self-Image", "personal effort", and "Personal Effort"; and (3) significant differences in the characteristics of serious golfers among different levels of golf involvements exit.