We thank Rodney B Dieser for their interest in our Review.1Fancourt D Aughterson H Finn S Walker E Steptoe A How leisure activities affect health: a narrative review and multi-level theoretical framework of mechanism of action. Dieser compares research on serious leisure with the framework presented in our Review. The serious leisure perspective is a valuable contribution to the understanding of leisure activities, but it is different to the aims of our investigation.As Stebbins2Leisure activities in context: a micro-macro/agency-structure interpretation of leisure. notes, “there have been any number of micro, meso, and macro analyses of leisure”. Although, the majority of these analyses have focused on understanding the context for leisure engagement (such as the social worlds, organisations, institutions, movements, and spatial arrangements within which leisure engagement is situated), our framework focuses specifically on the mechanisms by which leisure affects health. How leisure affects health has been noted as a research gap on multiple occasions, as we cite in our Review. Indeed, Stebbins himself writes that, in leisure research, the link between serious leisure and health and wellbeing is a major lacuna.3The serious leisure perspective: a synthesis.

Although, as we note in our Review, hundreds of publications have considered mechanisms linking leisure and health (including the psychological and social mechanisms that Stebbins discusses), the literature has developed in disciplinary silos, often with the findings from social sciences separated from the findings from medical disciplines, biology, ecology, and humanities. Consequently, much of the work so far on leisure and health has involved few disciplinary perspectives at once and has discussed only a small number of specific mechanisms within studies. No comprehensive review of all mechanisms identified has been published—a research gap that our Review has sought to fill by synthesising the cross-disciplinary findings from these previous studies.

A consideration of mechanisms across multiple disciplines is crucial for the advancement of this field so that overly simplistic assumptions about causal pathways are avoided and the effect of leisure activities on health is effectively captured. We propose that the complex adaptive systems science that we integrate with our theoretical framework will support the integration of multiple disciplines in future research.

Our Review does not attempt to theorise on what leisure is. But the work of Stebbins and others who have unpacked the concept of leisure in detail, elucidating different categories of leisure engagement, will be essential as this field moves forwards. For example, it will be important to ascertain whether serious leisure, because it can activate specific mechanisms that are not as commonly (or not as strongly) activated by other domains of leisure activity, leads to greater health benefits. An alternative possibility is that other domains of leisure activity, such as casual leisure,1Fancourt D Aughterson H Finn S Walker E Steptoe A How leisure activities affect health: a narrative review and multi-level theoretical framework of mechanism of action. could lead to similar health outcomes via different causal mechanisms. Consequently, we call for more research on the components of leisure activities that could help to explain why different activities differentially activate various mechanisms of action.

We declare no competing interests.

References1.Fancourt D Aughterson H Finn S Walker E Steptoe A

How leisure activities affect health: a narrative review and multi-level theoretical framework of mechanism of action.

Lancet Psychiatry. 8: 329-3392.

Leisure activities in context: a micro-macro/agency-structure interpretation of leisure.

Routledge, New York3.

The serious leisure perspective: a synthesis.

Palgrave McMillan, New YorkArticle InfoPublication HistoryIdentification

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(21)00201-7

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© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

ScienceDirectAccess this article on ScienceDirect Linked ArticlesHow leisure activities affect health: the serious leisure perspective

In a Review of how leisure activities affect health, Daisy Fancourt and colleagues1 state that there is no unifying framework that explains how leisure activities affect health and they outline a multi-level leisure framework. They identified more than 600 mechanisms of action by which leisure can affect health at the micro, meso, and macro levels. However, Stebbins2 had previously described a unifying framework, the serious leisure perspective , which elucidates how leisure activities affect health.

Full-Text PDF How leisure activities affect health: a narrative review and multi-level theoretical framework of mechanisms of action

There is a large and growing body of evidence on the health benefits of engagement in leisure activities (voluntary, enjoyable non-work activities, such as hobbies, arts, volunteering, community group membership, sports, and socialising). However, there is no unifying framework explaining how leisure activities affect health: what the mechanisms of action are by which engagement with leisure activities leads to the prevention, management, or treatment of mental and physical illness. In this Review, we identify and map over 600 mechanisms of action.

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