Valuing subjective well-being benefits from leisure activities: informing post-Covid public funding of arts, culture and sport

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

March 1, 2024

Summary:

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the leisure sector as lockdowns and social distancing resulted in a temporary shutdown. Using large-scale UK social survey data from two waves of Understanding Society, we employ the life satisfaction valuation method to provide estimates of monetary values of the subjective well-being benefits of leisure activities. We find that well-being benefits to life satisfaction from arts events, visiting museums and moderate sports have a significant monetary value. The value of some leisure activities to domains of satisfaction is higher compared with life satisfaction. The value to leisure satisfaction is particularly high, especially arts activities. Well-being benefits of moderate and mild sport are particularly high for health satisfaction. Meanwhile, activities which involve social interaction, including arts events and moderate sport have greater relevance to job satisfaction. These findings evidence the value of leisure activities, informing arguments for public funding to support and aid recovery in the sector.

Published in

Annals of Leisure Research

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 27 , p.274 -292

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2022.2099436

ISSN

11745398

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Uses Understanding Society data (not Understanding Society - COVID-19 Study, 2020)

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