The relationship between serious and casual participants' personality characteristics with leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction

The main purpose of this study is to determine the serious and casual leisure participants and to compare their personality characteristics, and to explore relationships between personality traits with the serious and casual leisure participation, leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction. The research was conducted to 108 students who are studying at Osmangazi University for the pilot study, and 1428 students who are studying at Anadolu University for empirical research.In this sense, two studies were carried out consecutively in this study. In the first stage, Study I, it was aimed to develop ?Serious and Casual Leisure Measure (SCLM)? and ?Leisure Satisfaction? Scale, and it was intended to test measurement model and factor structure of the ?Adjective Based Personality Test? and ?Life Satisfaction? Scale. Following scale development and measurement model confirmation, the Study II was carried out to classify leisure participants according to SCLM dimensions and to test main structural model on the relationships between personality characteristics with serious and casual leisure participation, leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction.In the Study I, the results revealed that the psychometric properties of the SCLM including 42 items and 9 factors were satisfactory and it was developed for being used specifically in Turkish culture. These factors are labelled as leisure career, feeling of competence, psychosocial benefit, therapeutic benefit, social world, commitment, personality, perseverance, and personal effort. According to the results, it was found that Leisure Satisfaction Scale is a valid and reliable measure for a Turkish population and it has one-factor structure and 5 items. In Study II, according to cluster analysis it was found that leisure participants classify into two groups as casual and serious leisure participants. In this study, with the objective of testing the proposed hypothetical model it was developed a structural equation model and results suggest that model fits the data well.