ABSTRACT
Serious leisure has become the bench mark from which analyses of casual and project-based leisure have often been undertaken. A quality distinguishing all types of serious leisure is the opportunity to follow a (leisure) career in the endeavor, a career shaped by its own special contingencies, turning points, and stages of achievement and involvement. Careers for serious leisure participants unfold along lines of their efforts to achieve, for instance, a high level of showmanship, athletic prowess, or scientific knowledge or to accumulate formative experiences in a volunteer role. The rewards of a serious leisure pursuit are the more or less routine values that attract and hold its enthusiasts. The intensity with which some participants approach their leisure suggests that, there, they may at times be in psychological flow. Casual leisure is immediately intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it.
