This chapter was to review the literatures about each term, including serious leisure-travel, well-being, social support and intercultural communication competence.
Besides, the relationships among them were also discussed.
Well-being
In most countries, governments often focus on development of economy, which they thought is to pursue people’s happiness and improve people’s life quality. Such a situation is not only in the developed countries but also in the developing countries. Therefore, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is always over-emphasized and even seen as a standard of showing nation’s advancement, prosperity and happiness.
Lin (2007), the author of Businessweekly, pointed out that in the World Map of Happiness 2006, people living in rich countries doesn’t feel relatively happier than those who living in poor countries such as the Kingdom of Bhutan where government takes Gross National Happiness (GNH) more seriously, not GDP. Even the world’s largest economy, USA, only ranked No.17, falling behind top 10. The second biggest economy, Japan, ranked No.88. Happiness is a goal which human beings is keen to search for, and can also be a measure of social progress (Helliwell, Richard, & Jeffrey, 2013). Although money is a way to pursue happiness throughout the world, it is not the only way. In review of studies on well-being, Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002) pointed out that the correlation is larger between well-being and income in poorer countries because money in those countries is for avoiding being in poverty and living in better condition. However, in the long-term, income increases little well-being if it is obtained by well-off individuals. In wealthy nations, people might have more risk of unhappiness than that of poor people.
Diener and Biswas-Diener (2002) also indicated high well-being might increase chances
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for high income. Indeed, there are more and more national leaders and scholars advocate the importance of well-being. The Economist (2009) reported that Joseph Stiglitz, a chairman of Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress and also one of laureates with Nobel prizes in economics, suggested countries should emphasis on people’s subjective feeling and well-being instead of GDP fetishism through a 292-page report. In Beaumont (2011), British Prime Minister, David Cameron, with his impetus to value national well-being, the Office of National Statistics started with a project called Measuring National Well-being (MNW) program for fuller and further understanding of national well-being from November 2010. Each quarter, the office will send questionnaires to investigate individual well-being and the assessment is not just individual’s feeling but also how much meaning related to the activities they do in daily lives.
In Canada, “Collectively, this index (well-being index) helps us to determine trends in our overall quality of life, giving us a powerful tool for action.” said the Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, David Johnson. Obviously, well-being is also attached great importance to Canada’s policy. Canada government, working with University of Waterloo, builds a conceptual framework to measure the Canadian Index of Well-being (CIW). Their definition of well-being is “The presence of the highest possible quality of life in its full breadth of expression focused on but not necessarily exclusive to: good living standards, robust health, a sustainable environment, vital communities, an educated populace, balanced time use, high levels of democratic participation, and access to and participation in leisure and culture.”
To follow the international trend, Taiwanese President Ma also declared in 2012 that National Well-being Indicators will be published in each following August. Therefore, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) adopts framework of Better Life Index which was fully studied and identified as essential by Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) to measure Taiwanese well-being. Based
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on Taiwanese culture and characteristics, DGBAS added 38 extra indicators.
Better Life Index includes eleven domains which are housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance. Here is a table showing 11 domains and 24 indicators of Better Life Index below,
Table 2.1.
Domains and What Are Measured in Better Life Index
Domain Indicator
1. Housing
Housing expenditure
Dwellings with Basic Facilities
Rooms per Person
2. Income
Household Net Adjusted Disposable Income
4. Community Social Support Network
5. Education
9. Life satisfaction Life Satisfaction
10. Safety Homicide Rate
Assault Rate
11. Work-life balance
Employees Working Long Hours
Time devoted to Leisure and Personal Care
Retrieved from http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/
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Organizations also notice the benefits of well-being so that many organizations are trying to highlight employee well-being and harmonious working environment to attract potential job hunters. In workplace, well-being also plays an important role not only in positively affecting employees’ job performance, job satisfaction but also increasing productivity, organization identification and job involvement ( Lin, 2008; Lin, Lu, Wu & Wu.
2012; Hsieh, 2012;Wright & Cropanzano, 2004). Each company deservedly wishes the employees have high productivity and good performance. Generally speaking, employees with high job satisfaction don’t mean they have high well-being. Actually, well-being is an overall concept and is a positive feeling toward personal lives, not just limited in workplace.
Summary
In this part, the researcher pointed out the importance of well-being in nations and workplace. Highly developed countries such as British and Canada also take people’s well-being as one part of policy implementation and Taiwan government started to measure people’s well-being in 2012, too. In workplace, employees with high well-being could have more productivity.
Serious Leisure
Systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity sufficiently substantial, interesting, and fulfilling for the participant to find a (leisure) career there acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience (Stebbins, 2008).
Both work and leisure are essential for people’s life (Iso-Ahola & Mannell, 2004).
Compared to normal leisure, serious leisure focuses more on the involvement and shows that pursuing sense of achievement and self-growth is more crucial. When people are attracted by those interesting and challenging leisure activities, they are willing to involve more and try to obtain more skills, knowledge and experiences. Besides, for those participants, continuous
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pursuit of what they like is very necessary. Stebbins (1982) pointed out the concept of serious leisure and stated six characteristics of it, including perseverance, career in their endeavors, durable individual benefits, personal efforts, unique ethos and strong identification with the activity.
1. Perseverance
When facing some difficulties or barriers such as weather, fear, anxiety, tiredness or getting hurt, participants will endeavor to overcome the problem to join the leisure activities.
For example, volunteers are willing to play a part in relief activities even if that area is dangerous. Backpackers would spare no efforts to experience the exotic lifestyles even if they will never know what will happen, they still try it.
2. Career
Through continuous involvement and barriers they confront in the pursuit of the leisure activities, participants gradually find out their life goals and will see those activities as one part of their lives even if they brings no extra income. They will set up some different goals at different life stages. For example, joggers will train themselves and set up goals on a regular time schedule for challenging marathon competition.
3. Durable individual benefits
Participants will obtain long-term benefits during the endless pursuit of leisure activities they join. These benefits include personal enrichment, self-actualization, self-expression, enhanced self-image, self-gratification, re-creation, financial return, group attraction, group accomplishments and group maintenance.
4. Personal efforts
Participants will keep spending much time gaining related knowledge, skill and experience. For example, people who like photography would join clubs, related lectures or register training courses for improving themselves.
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5. Unique ethos
Participants will have their unique social world where people with the similar interests are willing to share their experience and help each other. Those participants will have their own norms, beliefs, morals and values which other people may not understand. This unique ethos is also called subculture. For example, cosplayers have their own subculture and enjoy their social world which other people might think weird.
6. Strong identification with the activity
Participants will feel greatly excited and interested when people discuss the related topics. They have strong identification with the leisure activity they are involved in, often feeling proud of it and also like to share and promote the activity.
Travel
Travel has become a way for modern people to relax and release pressure. According to Tourism Bureau, M.O.T.C. Republic of China‘s report (2012), some statistics are listed as follows：
1. More than 90% Taiwanese traveled domestically and more than 20% traveled overseas.
2. The average expense for personal domestic travel is 1,900 NTD per time and for overseas is 4, 8740 NTD per time. Besides, total amount of travelling fee is 2,699 billion NTD for domestic travel and 4,991 billion NTD for oversea travel.
3. The length of domestic travel is 1.47 days and of overseas is 9.06 days per time.
4. The top one reason about why people cannot travel is having no time, occupying 43.1%
while money problem occupies 16.1%.
Besides, refer to figure 2.1, Tourism Bureau, M.O.T.C. Republic of China‘s report (2013) shows the number of outbound departures has been booming from 5,923,072 to 10,239,760 since 2003.
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Figure 2.1 The number of outbound Taiwanese citizens and foreign visitors to Taiwan over the past decade. Copyright 2013 by Tourist Bureau, M.O.T.C.
Retrieved from http://admin.taiwan.net.tw/public/public.aspx?no=315
Shen (1995) groups overseas travel into three types which are tourist group, independent travel and semi-independent travel.
1. Tourist group
Normally, it is a group which is organized by tour companies. The tour schedule will be fully arranged and company would assign a tour guide to stay with the tourist group for being in charge of daily necessaries and any emergency.
2. Independent travel (Backpacker)
Loker-Murphy, & Pearce (1995) depicted a figure showing the evolution framework of backpackers. From that figure, it pointed out the backpacker phenomenon began since 17th century, and there are lots of similar terms such as wanderer (Vogt, 1976), budget traveler (Riley, 1988) or backpacker/youth budget traveler (Loker-Murphy & Pearce, 1995). Each term is a little bit different form another so here, the researcher creates a table, showing the characteristics, author of each term and the common characteristic out of these four terms.
Unit of measurement: person-time
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 (year)
(Inbound) (Outbound)
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Table 2.2.
Other terms of backpacker and the characteristics
Term Characteristic Author
Wanderer Youthful adventurer
Western middle-class youth
Tight budget
Pursue the values of novelty, independence, risk, spontaneity and multitude of options
Vogt ,1976
Like informal and participatory holiday activities
Independently organized and flexible travel schedule
Avoid mass tourist destination
Riley,1988
Common points of all the terms 1. Limited budget
2. Independence 3. Flexible schedule 4. Traveler , not tourist
Nowadays, the most commonly used term is “backpacker” even in Taiwan. However, what is the specific definition of limited budget? How independent should a backpacker be?
How flexible schedule should a backpacker need? Do backpackers really need to use backpacks? Those questions are not well defined in most literature and actually, each traveler has their own definition of backpacker. In Li-Ru Huang’s opinion, a Chinatimes travel reporter, she pointed out backpacker is the traveler who could design her/his own plan
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independently regardless of the length of travel or where she/he lives. “The definition should be focus on autonomy.” said she.
3. Semi-independent travel
Semi-independent travel is different from independent travel (backpackers). Some people might not have backpacker experience or are too busy at work so that they can’t arrange each detail of their travel. For that reason, another travel type appears in the market.
According to Shen (1995), people purchase the travel products from airline companies or travel agencies, which include flight tickets, accommodation, pick-up service and city tour.
However, other travel schedule should be arranged by themselves. Besides, Liu (2008) created a table, clearly showing the comparison among tourist group, independent travel and semi-independent travel. Here, the researcher translates his Chinese table into English which was shown below,
Table 2.3
The Comparison Among Tourist Group, Independent Travel and Semi- independent Travel
Items Tourist group Independent
travel
Language ability No limitation Should have basic language ability
Should have better language ability Transportation Fully arranged by
tour company
Plan by yourself A shuttle bus from airport to hotel as service
Accommodation Fully arranged by tour company
Plan by yourself Fully arranged by tour company
Meals Fully arranged by tour company and
Plan by yourself Only breakfast provided by hotel.
(Continued)
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should eat with group.
Flexibility of schedule
Fully fixed schedule. The length of travel is long.
Items Tourist group Independent
travel
Semi- independent travel Expenses Payment includes
meals and accommodation.
Extra service should be paid individually.
Plan by yourself Pay for what items or schedules you choose.
Level of independence
Low High Medium
Adapted from “A study of using overseas backpackers' metaphor to construct consensus map,”
by Journal of Management & Systems, 15(2), p.241. Copyright 2008 by Department of Business Administration, China University of Technology.
Summary
In this part, the researcher discussed what serious leisure is and then travel’s categories.
Serious leisure is people’s attitude toward their leisure activities and it has six characteristics which are perseverance, career, durable individual benefits, personal efforts, unique ethos and strong identification. Travel could be classified into tourist group, independent travel and semi-independent travel.
Serious Leisure-Travel and Well-being
In World Happiness Report, those who are emotionally happy and satisfied with their lives and environment will be possibly healthy and productive but mental illness, as a crucial cause of unhappiness is often ignored by policy makers. Actually, 10% of the world’s population suffers from depression or anxiety disorders, which will result in absenteeism and being money-consuming in nations, families and workplace (Helliwell, Richard, & Jeffrey, Table2.3 (Continued)
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2013). Besides, Canada, ranking No.6 in the World Happiness Report 2013, measures the CIW (Canadian Index of Well-being) every year and the framework includes eight domains, one of which is leisure and culture. In definition of leisure in CIW, it means formal and informal, active and passive, including examples as cycling, hockey, fishing, reading for pleasure, playing games, and spending time with family and friends. In this report, it shows Canadians have spent more than 21% of income on leisure and culture and this percentage is going steady. CIW has tracks the changes in amount of time and money that Canadians are willing to spent on so that it appears leisure activities are essential to people’s well-being.
Even in table 2.1, showing the domains of Better Life index, leisure is also considered in Taiwanese well-being measurement.
Having therapeutic recreation is beneficial to raise personal growth, decrease negative emotion, increase positive thinking and life satisfaction (Carruthers, & Hood, 2004). Studies also showed that more obvious characteristics of serious leisure that participants possess, higher well-being they have. For instance, in the study (Heo, Stebbins, Kim, & Lee, 2013), it proved that higher level of involvement in leisure activity is able to positively strengthen aged people’s life satisfaction and health. When exploring the relationship between the involvement level of bike participants and well-being, Chen, Ou, & Ou, (2009) pointed out greater serious leisure leads to a higher well-being. To know the level of leisure activity involvement, the six dimensions of serious leisure, perseverance (overcoming problem to keep leisure activity), career (seeing leisure activity as part of lives), durable individual benefit (obtaining continuously intangible benefit), personal effort (spending time on activity-related knowledge), unique ethos (specialized social world), strong identification (feeling proud of the activity) was used in this study.
Summary
Appropriate leisure activities could bring happiness and more involvement of leisure
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activities could bring more happiness. Therefore, the hypothesis 1 and sub-hypotheses are showed below,
H1：Serious leisure – travel positively related to well-being.
H1-1：Perseverance is positively related to well-being.
H1-2：Career is positively related to well-being.
H1-3：Durable individual benefits are positively related to well-being.
H1-4：Personal efforts are positively related to well-being.
H1-5：Unique ethos is positively related to well-being.
H1-6：Strong identification is positively related to well-being.
Serious Leisure-Travel, Social support and Well-being
Social support is resource others provide makes you feel and conscious of people’s concern but it is not always consistent. To be more specific, this resource mostly comes from family members, friends and special others. Through interpersonal interaction, people would feel meaningful comments, support, messages and assistance. Besides, social support has different functions and meaning when people at different period of life such as childhood, adulthood or even when their roles change (Cohen, & Syme, 1985).
Cohen & Syme (1985) pointed out the interest in social support has been on the increase because it affects people’s well-being positively or negatively. Social support comes from various groups of people. In workplace, organizational support is one resource of social support. When employees feel themselves are concerned about by colleagues or supervisors, they will feel more happiness and have better performance. Like what Taiwanese researchers already mentioned that perceived organizational support has a positive effect on employees’
well-being and this wellbeing also moderates the relationship between job performance and perceived organizational support (Lin, Lu, Wu & Wu. 2012). Besides, the relationship between line supervisors and employees is more important. Most reasons that employees
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often leave organization are because of inharmonious relationship with line supervisors. Like Department of Labor, Taipei City Government (2013) shows in Taipei Best Company Monograph that salary and welfare could attract human capitals but fine organization culture and line managers’ management style are the most important key to retain those talents.
Based on the literature review and to fit the research purpose, the researcher is thinking whether or not social support from line supervisors, friends and families could moderate the relationship between serious leisure-travel and well-being.
Summary
Social support was widely discussed when researchers studied well-being. In this study, the researcher considered the support from supervisors, friends and families. Social support was to be a moderator in the conceptual framework. Therefore, the hypothesis 2 was showed below,
H2：Social support has positive moderating effect on the relationship between travel and well-being.
Serious leisure-travel, Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) and Well-being
With quick development of technology, the convenience of communication tools, transportation and globalization, it is easier to meet different people from various cultures. In workplace, communication is the basic of management, especially in cross-cultural organizations. In the review of Chang et al.,(2009), the founder of Acer, Stan Shih, also emphasizes the importance of international talents. He recommended that besides creativity and leadership, the international talents should have communication skill, language skill and the ability to absorb different cultures. In fact, before any strategy implementations, it is very crucial to let all employees on the same page and have the same ideas with organization. To lead a global team of diverse employees smoothly and successfully, the intercultural
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communication competence and style are the keys for managers. In terms of ICC, it has always been discussed in cross-cultural organizations, expatriates, teaching system in many literatures (DeVoss, Jasken, & Hayden, 2002; Jameson, 2007; Lauring, 2011) or the discussion about international talents are focused in business field (Chang, 2009). However, ICC is also available during the overseas travel. It is common that travelers must meet some
communication competence and style are the keys for managers. In terms of ICC, it has always been discussed in cross-cultural organizations, expatriates, teaching system in many literatures (DeVoss, Jasken, & Hayden, 2002; Jameson, 2007; Lauring, 2011) or the discussion about international talents are focused in business field (Chang, 2009). However, ICC is also available during the overseas travel. It is common that travelers must meet some