HEDONIC AND EUDAIMONIC MOTIVES FOR FAVOURITE LEISURE ACTIVITIES2

Many theories and models try to explain why people engage in different leisure activities, mainly focusing on different needs that can be satisfied through leisure and motives for engagement. Staying in this vein of research, current study compared hedonic and eudaimonic motives for favourite leisure activities. The participants were 422 students (26.12% male), with mean age 20.55, that rated hedonic and eudaimonic motives for their favourite activity. Activities were grouped into seven categories based on their nature: reading, artistic activities, sports, media and music, socialising, dancing and outdoor activities. Hedonic motives are more pronounced than eudaimonic motives for reading, electronic media and music, socialising, outdoor activities and dancing. Reading, artistic activities, sports and dancing are more eudaimonically motivated than electronic media and music, socialising and outdoor activities. There are no differences between activities in hedonic motives. In order to see if a type of activity moderates the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic motives, the activities were grouped in two more general categories: entertainment and active leisure. The results have shown that type of activity moderates the relationship between motives: hedonic and eudaimonic motives are more strongly related for the active leisure than for the entertainment.


Primenjena psihologija 2014/1
Leisure may be defined in different ways: as behaviour, as setting (physical environment), or as time in which specific types of mental states, emotions, cognitions, perceptions and need satisfaction occurs (e.g.Csikszentmihalyi & Kleiber, 1991;Mannell & Kleiber, 1997).Until now there is no consensus on how to define leisure, but most of the leisure literature focuses on the qualitative nature of experiences during free time, or on structured activities in which people engage in free time.In that manner, most recently Newman, Tay and Diener (2013) conceptualized leisure as the amount of activities or time spent apart from work and/or participation in leisure as subjectively defined.In current research, similar conceptualization of leisure was used: participants could state as their favourite leisure activity any activity that they perceive as such.The intention was to research all favourite ways in which students spend their free time, without limiting their choices on activities that are more or less active, structured or organized.
Why do people choose different activities to engage in during their free time?One of the possible answers could be found by identifying the various needs and motivations that make people seek particular leisure experiences.Motivation is the intervening factor that brings people from feeling a need for some leisure activity to really making a move in that way.Basic needs, like competence and autonomy, are practically always important, and hence relatively stable, whereas motivations vary across contexts (Kleiber, Walker, & Mannell, 2011).According to several well-known motivation theories, people engage in an activity because they find it pleasurable, interesting, fulfilling, and absorbing (e.g.Apter, 1982Apter, , 1989;;Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), because it enables them self-realization, growth and development through satisfaction of innate psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000) as well as because it is a way to accomplish some of the goals individual sets for herself (Apter, 1982(Apter, , 1989)).
We think that all mentioned above can be put under the umbrella of hedonic and eudaimonic motives for engagement in particular activity, as defined in the work of Veronika Huta (Huta, 2007;Huta & Ryan, 2010;Huta, 2013).Hedonically motivated activities are engaged for pleasure and comfort, while eudaimonically motivated activities are engaged because a person wants to use or develop her best (Huta 2007;Huta & Ryan, 2010).Similar differentiation of motives for engagement is given by Waterman (1990Waterman ( , 1993;;Waterman, Schwartz, & Conti, 2008), who says that engagement in hedonic activities is due to desire to experience hedonic pleasure, while the personally expressive activities (this is how Waterman calls eudaimonic activities) have two sources of motivation: hedonic pleasure and eudaimonia, i.e. feeling of self-realization.Even though they are different, hedonic and eudaimonic experiences can coincide: the results from many studies suggest that these two processes work in tandem.For example, activities high on eudaimonic well-being in most cases are also high on hedonic enjoyment; whereas the opposite is not always true (Waterman et al., 2008).Categorized by potential to yield hedonic enjoyment or eudaimonia there are three categories of activities: those for which both hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia are experienced; those for which only hedonic enjoyment is experienced and those giving rise to neither hedonic enjoyment nor eudaimonia.The category of activities giving rise to eudaimonia but not hedonic enjoyment is a theoretical null according to eudaimonistic philosophical perspective (Telfer, 1980;Waterman et al., 2008).It is difficult to categorize activities as hedonic or eudaimonic based on their surface content, since the same activity can be perceived as hedonic by one person and eudaimonic by another.For this reason, we focused on individuals' subjective motives for engagement, not on the activity itself.
Even though there are many different definitions of leisure, many different study methods and leisure activities classifications (Kleiber et al., 2011), the previous studies' results show that leisure is beneficial to individual as well as to society: it helps to prevent risk behaviours (Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003), and enhances well-being (e.g.Brajša-Žganec, Merkaš, & Šverko, 2011;Iwasaki, 2007).More recently, authors aimed to determine differences in relationship of hedonic and eudaimonic motives with many well-being outcomes (Huta, 2007;Huta & Ryan, 2010) and found that hedonic motives are related more to subjective well-being (positive affect and carefreeness), while eudaimonic motives are related more to meaning.Determining which activities are more hedonic and which are more eudaimonic can help us to create different programs for wellbeing enhancement as well as for prevention of risk behaviours, which might be especially important in the adolescence and young adulthood.
In the present study, the attention was directed toward favourite leisure activities, having in mind the importance of perceived freedom as a one of defining characteristics of leisure activities (e.g.Iso-Ahola, 1999;Neulinger, 1981).We assumed that some of the activities in free time (e.g.studying) are not that much freely chosen -individual did choose it independently, but for example, the sense of responsibility toward parents who are financing their education might play a role in that choice.However, favourite activity should be really a free choice of individual, which makes it the best material for researching the motives of engagement.The focus of this paper is on the motives, assuming that they could differ from person to person even though they refer to the same activity.However, different activities will also be compared on the dominance of hedonic/eudaimonic motives.These data can be perceived as additional data,

Instrument
Self-reported Hedonic and Eudaimonic Activities Scale (SHEA: Huta, 2007; HEMA: Huta & Ryan, 2010).This scale has been translated to Croatian for purposes of this research.The scale consists of 8 items, four related to eudaimonic and four to hedonic motives.Every participant stated one favourite leisure activity.For that specific activity participants rated various eudaimonic and hedonic motives by answering to what degree they approach that specific activity with stated intentions.The example of the item measuring hedonic motives is "Seeking relaxation" and the example of the item measuring eudaimonic motives is "Seeking to develop a skill, learn, or gain insight into something".Participants gave their ratings on a 7-point Likert type scale (1 = not at all to 7 = very much).
In order to control each variable error variance, principal axis factor analysis was used.It yielded two factor solution, analogous to the original factor structure proposed by scale's author (Huta, 2007).Eigenvalues before rotation were 3.68, 1.57, 0.29 and 0.18.The two factors accounted for 63.66% of the variance.The original model (Huta, 2007) specified that the two motives are non-orthogonal; therefore the data were oblimin rotated.Every item loaded more highly on the factor it was intended to measure.Cronbach alpha for eudaimonic motives was .87 and for hedonic .85.

Procedure
The research is conducted over a period of 3 months as a part of a larger study.The researcher contacted potential participants through their professors during their regular faculty courses, and pointed out that the participation is voluntary and anonymous.Participants received no participation fee except personal feedback.

Data preparation and analysis
Participants stated their favourite activity and rated that activity on several items reflecting hedonic and eudaimonic motives.Two independent raters inspected the participants' answers and proposed categories of activities.The proposed categories were compared and matched, and then the activities were classified into seven of them.The first category was labelled Reading and it includes activities like reading a book, reading newspapers, reading comics, etc.The second category was labelled Artistic and includes: painting, drawing, sculpting, writing poems, writing stories, and playing an instrument.The third category was labelled Sports and includes activities like football, basketball, jogging, fitness, weight lifting, volleyball, etc.The fourth category was labelled Media and music and includes activities like watching TV, listening to music, playing video games, surfing the web, watching movies, Facebook, etc.The fifth category was called Socialising and it includes going out with friends, hanging out, having a drink with friends, etc. Sixth category was labelled Outdoor and it is comprised of activities like taking a walk by the sea, taking a walk in the forest, being in the nature, etc. Final category was labelled Dancing because it includes activities like dancing and salsa.For the purposes of subsequent analyses, activities were also grouped in two more general categories.In the Active category are activities that have rather clear goals, procedures, and are more demanding and dynamic: artistic, sports, and dancing.In the Entertainment category are activities that are entertaining, fun, and easy-going: reading, music and media, socialising and outdoor activities.

Results
Participants rated different motives for engaging in a favourite activity.As it was expected that participants engage in different activities for different motives, the differences in eudaimonic and hedonic motives for different activities were tested, as well as the interaction between both motives and activities.Therefore, hedonic and eudaimonic motives were measured at within-subject level, while favourite activity was between-subject factor.The descriptive data and results of mixed ANOVA are shown in Table 1.

Petra Anić
Primenjena psihologija 2014/1 The average ratings of hedonic motives are more coherent than average ratings of eudaimonic motives for different favourite activities.There are significant main effects of motives for activities, types of activities and significant interaction.Effect size of motives for favourite activities is the highest, while the second factor and the interaction effect sizes are smaller (Table 1).
In Figure 1 mean ratings and 95% confidence intervals of hedonic and eudaimonic motives for favourite activities are presented.
Figure 1.Mean ratings and 95% confidence intervals of eudaimonic and hedonic motives for favourite activities.
Bonferroni post-hoc tests revealed that reading, artistic activities, sports and dancing are more eudaimonically motivated than electronic media or listening to music, socialising and outdoor activities.Regarding hedonic motives, all activities are equally hedonically motivated.Also, it can be seen that all means are high, especially those for hedonic motives, which could point to a possible ceiling effect.Theoretically, these results were expected, because it is hard to believe that someone will choose certain activity as its favourite activity if he or she does not enjoy it.The fact that ceiling effect can increase Type I error has been taken into account, but as it can be seen, the effect size for motives is quite large, therefore the results can be considered valid.
Confidence intervals, as well as Bonferroni post-hoc tests, revealed that the differences between hedonic and eudaimonic motives are significant for primenjena psihologija, str.5-21
As preliminary analysis, before testing the moderator effects of type of activity on the effects of eudaimonic motives on hedonic motives, correlations between eudaimonic and hedonic motives for each activity, as well as for the two more general groups of activities were calculated (Table 2).Correlations between hedonic and eudaimonic motives are significant for all activities, but they differ in strength.The highest correlation can be observed for artistic activities, followed by dancing and sports, while the lowest correlations are obtained for socialising and reading.As mentioned, the activities were also grouped in two more general categories: entertainment and active.Correlation between hedonic and eudaimonic motives is lower for the entertainment group, than for the active group.
The pattern of correlations suggests that a type of activity could be a moderator of the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic motives.This problem was tested only for the two more general groups of activities, because the ratio between the number of participants and the number of activities was too small when all seven types of activities were included.Hedonic motives were predicted by eudaimonic motives, two types of activities and their interaction.The results of the moderation analysis are shown in Table 3.
The type of activity (entertainment or active) moderates the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic motives for activities.The slope and the intercept of eudaimonic motives are greater for the active group of activities, than those for the entertainment group.Statistically significant interaction term in Model 2 shows that there is significant difference between the effects of eudaimonic motives on hedonic for different activities (Table 3).The estimated simple slope of eudaimonic motives for the entertainment group of activities is .15,while the same slope for the active group of activities is .37.

Discussion
Leisure gives individuals great opportunity for identity exploration, especially in the adolescent and young adulthood phase of life, when independent future-life choices and decisions are to be made (e.g.Shaw, Kleiber, & Caldwell, 1995).Studying leisure activities is rather complicated because of the great variety of the activities a person can engage in.If a researcher wants to move beyond qualitative data, classification of activities is necessary.Until now there is no universal classification of leisure activities, instead each author uses classification suitable for its own research (e.g.Passmore & French, 2001;Tinsley & Eldredge, 1995).In current study, activities were classified based on their nature, in attempt to group similar activities in the same category.However, groups are not equally homogenous.For example, Reading group is quite homogeneous, compared to it Sport group is somewhat less homogenous, while the most extreme example of heterogeneity is Media and music group, where we have activities like playing a computer game, watching TV or listening to music.Obviously, differences in the homogeneity of groups are not ideal for generalization of results, but we tried to keep the process of classification relatively consistent, and the number of groups relatively small in order to avoid having many groups with small number of participants.Furthermore, since we have studied motives for activities, not the activities themselves, this
Every day we do different things in our free time and we do it for different reasons.The motives for engagement are individual, and can differ from person to person: one person can engage in sports because his or her friends do it too and because they are having good time there (hedonic motives are dominant), while the other will exercise because he or she wants to achieve better sport results, to advance the skills etc. (eudaimonic motives are more pronounced).Therefore, one should be careful when labelling activities as hedonic or eudaimonic per se, it is better to ask a person how he or she perceives it.For this reason, it is decided to ask participants to rate their motives for engaging in activity themselves, instead of us implying that certain activities are more hedonic, while others are more eudaimonic.
In general, the results showed more variability in eudaimonic than in hedonic motives for favourite activities, which means that all activities are equally hedonically motivated, while they differ on the eudaimonic motivation.This was expected because some activities are not a source of personal development or meaning (e.g.taking a walk by the sea, or playing computer games), but still are a source of pleasure and good feelings.This is an empirical confirmation of theoretical claims (e.g.Telfer, 1980;Waterman, 2008) that eudaimonia is always accompanied by hedonia, unlike the opposite situation, where hedonia can be experienced alone.
Beyond this, the goal was to see if hedonic motives are dominant over the eudaimonic ones for some activities more than for others.Media and music listening, socializing and outdoor activities are mostly hedonically motivated, i.e. the difference between hedonic and eudaimonic motives is more pronounced.Those activities are a good way to relax, entertain, to have fun and experience pleasure, but in most cases they won't be a source of meaning and purpose in life, nor will they foster development of skills.On the other side, there are favourite activities that are high on both, hedonic and eudaimonic motives, which mean that they are simultaneously a source of pleasure and good feelings, but also a way to develop our skills, to expand our knowledge, to have a sense of purpose and meaning in life.Once again it can be seen that no activity is purely eudaimonic, without hedonia at all.Similar findings were obtained in the study by Huta (2007), who showed that some activities, like playing a musical instrument, doing some artistic activity or playing a sport, could be high in both eudaimonic and hedonic motivation.
Although we claim that every person defines his or her activities as hedonic or eudaimonic by itself, some activities could be more hedonic compared to other activities, while some could be more eudaimonic, for most of the people.Current study showed that, in general, all activities are about equally hedonically motivated, which points to the fact that people about equally enjoy their favourite activity no matter what the activity is.As for eudaimonic motivation, activities differ: reading, artistic activities, sports and dancing are more eudaimonically motivated than media and music, socialising and outdoor activities.According to eudaimonic conceptions of happiness, an individual is happy if she lives a life worth living, trying to do her best, engaging in activities that are meaningful and purposeful.Reading, artistic activities, sports and dancing are generally more eudaimonically motivated than media and music, socialising and outdoor activities, probably because they offer a way to be more fully engaged in a meaningful activity that can contribute to personal development (e.g.learning something new from the book one reads).Using media and listening to music, socialising or outdoor activities are activities in which one needs to invest less energy and effort, activities that are more relaxing and easy-going, that in most cases do not provide opportunity to learn something, to advance personal skills or to develop ones potentials.As such, they are not high on eudaimonic motives.We were also interested in possible moderator role that the type of activity could have on the relationship between hedonic and eudaimonic motives.Hedonic and eudaimonic motives are more strongly related for the active group of activities, than for the entertainment group.The active group of activities is, as mentioned, comprised of activities that have rather clear goals, are more structured and are not just a way of "killing time"; they have some other goal, often related to enhancement of personal skills and knowledge.Those activities are the ones that Waterman and his colleagues (e.g.Waterman, 1993;Waterman et al., 2008) call personally expressive activities, which are characterized by the experience of hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonia both.The entertainment group consists of activities that are a source of fun and pleasure.They are less active and demanding; their goals are not related to personal development and are less structured.As such, they are a good way to entertain oneself, to avoid boredom, motivated mainly by hedonic pleasures, while eudaimonia is less experienced.Some people invest a lot of time and effort in free time activities, which is sometimes even more demanding than their job, college or school.On the contrary, some people spend their free time watching TV or going out with friends.Why is there such a difference?Why are some people ready to spend all of their free time in doing something demanding, physically or mentally exhausting, while others spend their free time passively, investing almost no energy and effort in those activities?According to the present study' results it could be that primenjena psihologija, str.5-21

Petra Anić
Primenjena psihologija 2014/1 the first group of people is eudaimonically motivated, they try to enhance their knowledge and skills and to find meaning in life, experiencing pleasure while doing so, whether the second group of people is motivated only by the pleasures they can gain.Since there are many characteristics of free time activities that haven't been researched in this study, future studies should be planned in order to fully describe free time activities and to point out more reasons why we choose one activity over the others.

Conclusions and directions for future research
In present study, a special attention is given to the favourite leisure activity, because it was assumed that this is the area of life where freedom and independency are emphasised the most, which makes it a good point to study motivation.Obtained results confirmed the claim that eudaimonia without hedonia cannot exist.This means that when an individual engages in some activity, which could be considered as purely eudaimonic (e.g.volunteering), it will anyway enjoy it.It is hard to imagine that a person would have a favourite activity, which is freely chosen and in which one engages frequently, without experiencing any pleasure.If there is no pleasure at all, it probably would not be a favourite activity.Additionally, activities that are less active and demanding, are a good source of pleasure, joy, and happiness, but if we want to experience meaning and purpose at the same time, we need to choose activities that are more challenging and energetic, that have clear goals, that will foster personal development or are beneficial to the society we live in.It would be interesting, in future studies, to compare activities on the goals people try to accomplish through engagement, and to relate those findings with the two sources of motivation: hedonic and eudaimonic.We would expect that activities engaged for hedonic motives would be strongly related to extrinsic life goals, while activities engaged for eudaimonic motives would be strongly related to intrinsic goals.Furthermore, it would be interesting to research long and short-term strivings in relation to engagement in different activities.

Table 1
Eudaimonic and hedonic motives for different favourite activities

Table 2
Correlations of eudaimonic and hedonic motives for favourite activities

Table 3
Hierarchical regression analysis predicting hedonic motives for favourite leisure activities