Serious Leisure As a Medium for Expressions of Agency in the Experience of Emerging Adults

Abstract

The serious leisure is considered as a living environment that is important for the development of agency at different ages. In the period of growing up, young people face many challenges that require them to actively make choices in the fields of education, profession, and relationships, and their previous experience of proactive interaction with the environment plays an important role, which can be relied upon when making responsible decisions. An important environment for the trial and implementation of agency can be the sphere of serious leisure as an activity that requires effort and long-term involvement and at the same time is characterized by great freedom of action. Awareness and integration of the experience of agency in the autobiographical narrative can serve as a basis for the complication and differentiation of the motivational system of the individual and further development of self-determination. Despite the wide representation of leisure studies, the choices made by young adults in leisure activities and attitudes towards them have yet to be explored. To study the manifestations of agency in serious leisure, 24 interviews with informants from the period of growing up were collected. The conducted deductive thematic analysis showed that the manifestations of agency can be found at the stages of initiation, implementation and termination of serious leisure, where they can be presented in the form of initiative, interaction, comprehension of events and decision-making, changes and organization of activities. The analysis of autobiographical narratives shows that the environment of serious leisure is saturated and promising for manifestations of agency at different ages.