ABSTRACT
Leisure activities are bewilderingly numerous and diverse, ranging from aerobics and arts, through to yachting and yoga. Leisure activities may be classified according to a range of criteria, each emphasising particular features or aspects of leisure activity, and different relationships between them. The typology identifies six major types of leisure activity. These are: recreations which including sports, arts, and countryside recreation; hobbies, crafts, and education; tourism and holidays; entertainments; commodities and shopping; gambling and gaming. Formal dimension indicates the process which characterises participation in a leisure activity. Experiences of leisure activity are, therefore, characterised by differing processes of production and consumption, relative activity and passivity of the participants, together with varying amounts of control exercised by the participant over the process and outcome of the activity. In the typology of leisure activities sports were identified as ‘recreation’, which involves the active production of a leisure experience with participants having some control over the process.
