The serious leisure perspective and tourism science

The serious leisure perspective and tourism science

The serious leisure perspective (SLP) has been guiding theory and research in the tourism sciences for 30 years. Although an increasing number of studies have been published since its inception, no one has painted a detailed picture of how these two areas of study are conceptually linked. The SLP synthesizes three main forms of leisure, known as serious leisure (later changed to serious pursuits to include devotee work), casual leisure, and project-based leisure. As this article shows these links are many and varied and thus richly suggestive of fruitful areas for research. The SLP is the only theoretic framework in leisure studies that strives to conceptualize the entire field, using as its anchor in this instance, the set of concepts that emerged from grounded theory research. Tourism studies is regarded in the SLP as a separate applied interdiscipline to which the latter has been extended on multiple occasions.