| Technological innovations permeate our homes, our daily schedules and habits (Cairncross, 1997), have tremendous significance in all realms of leisure participation (Godbey, 1997; and Smith, 1993), and may bring about profound and unexpected changes in the way we live, work and recreate (Neef, 1998). Leisure activities, pursuits and environments are being simulated at an unprecedented rate, these environments have experienced steady growth over the past decade and as a result, artificial adventure environments will likely dominate in the future (Priest and Gass, 2000).; There has been little, if any, empirical research investigating simulated leisure environments. The research problem of this study was to understand how individuals experience leisure in a simulated leisure environment and to develop a substantive theory explaining this experience. The research questions proposed for this study, coupled with a constructivist paradigm directed the researcher to a qualitative inquiry approach. More specifically, Glaser and Strauss' (1967) grounded theory methodology was utilized to develop a substantive theory explaining the simulated leisure experience. Multiple data collection techniques were utilized including: documents analysis, observations, natural field group interviews, and individual interviews. Two simulated leisure environments were investigated in this study based on their level of fidelity: indoor golf simulators and indoor rock climbing walls.; The interplay between the external factors of the environment and internal factors within the individual combined to produce a social, apathetic, and passive simulated leisure experience. As a result, the core category that emerged in this study was the notion of a reduced dimension of human involvement when experiencing leisure in these simulated leisure environments. The study also produced a more in-depth explanation of the factors contributing to the experience of apathy: a task versus goal orientation differentiating how individuals experienced leisure in these environments, and a typology of fidelity classifying the "realness" of these environments. This study also described nine characteristics of simulated leisure environments and concluded with proposing several propositions and corollaries of the simulated leisure experience. |
