Home brewing and serious leisure: An empirical evaluation

Abstract

This study examines the serious leisure experience through the perspectives of cognition and affect for the home brewer of craft beers. This research offers evidence that brewing beer at home fulfills the established criteria of serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982, 1992). Home brewing is a serious leisure pursuit in which the already fine line between amateurs and professionals is more easily crossed and less easily defined; and empirical scales measuring the dimensions of motivation, satisfaction, and emotion are employed to glean a deep and quantitative analysis of this serious leisure activity. This study analyses descriptive statistics to create a demographic profile of home brewing participants. Additionally, exploratory factor analysis of the developed components within the three scales was employed to gain a better understanding of those factors which drive both motivation and the satisfaction derived from the activity. Analyses of the correlation within the scales reveal the goodness of fit of the scale variables. The measurement of the participant’s aggregate satisfaction scores has also been analyzed to determine the link between satisfaction and the likelihood to continue and recommend home brewing, ultimately offering predictive ability and indications of future behavioral intentions. The measurement of motivation and emotion will offer insight into the depth of self-identification and actualization that result from involvement in this serious leisure activity.