The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in life satisfaction according to the patterns of leisure participation and to analyze the interrelationships among the different components.

For an active test group 1,368 subjects (890 in daily sports and 578 in arts and cultural activities) were presented, while 188 subjects (103 in daily sports and 85 in arts-cultural) were selected for posttesting; then for a passive group 232 subjects for pretesting and 114 for posttesting were selected.

In view of the characteristics of the field study a nonequivalent control group was assigned to this quasi-expeiimental design with a treatment of a 3-month active leisure participation program in daily sports and arts and cultural activities.


In this study, sex, age, socioeconomic status, and health were used as controlling dependent variables, while leisure satisfaction and flow experience are also regarded as influencing dependent variables based on the telic theory and autotelic theory ; subjects were both pretested and posttested for these variables at three month intervals.

The results were assessed using discriminant function analysis, an analysis of covariance, and path analysis by multiple regression. This experiment demonstrated that participation in daily sports and arts-cultural activities heightened life satisfaction by increasing the degree of flow experience and leisure satisfaction through active leisure participation.