Leisure constraints and negotiation strategies of South Korean university students living in single-person households: a grounded theory exploration

Abstract

This study examines the leisure constraints faced and the negotiation strategies used by seven male and three female university students in South Korea who live in single-person households. The grounded theory method was used with an open, axial, and selective coding process. As a result, 89 concepts, 33 subcategories, 12 categories, and a core category (i.e. “finding the strategies to settle the conflict between reality and the ideal leisure”) were generated. The components of leisure constraints that research participants had were “lack of leisure activity companion”, “lazy solo”, “university student’s life without time to rest and enjoy”, and “the difficult reality facing a university student who lives in a single-person household”. They also reported that “alternative types of leisure activities”, “efforts to overcome the constraints”, and “thinking differently” strategies were used to negotiate with their leisure constraints.