Grit, Leisure Involvement, and Life Satisfaction: A Case of Amateur Triathletes in Japan

Abstract

Although the relationship between leisure and subjective well-being has been widely studied in the leisure literature, the role of an individual’s personality in this relationship has rarely been explored. This study focuses on grit—a personality trait that consists of two dimensions of perseverance of effort and consistency of interest—and examines the relationships among grit, leisure involvement, and life satisfaction. Data were collected from participants (N = 347) in a triathlon event held in Japan. The results showed that perseverance of effort was positively associated with attraction, centrality, self-expression, and life satisfaction. Perseverance of effort was also positively indirectly associated with life satisfaction through attraction and negatively indirectly associated with life satisfaction through centrality. These findings contribute to the leisure literature by identifying the utility of perseverance of effort in predicting leisure involvement, and a negative relationship between centrality and life satisfaction in an interdependent cultural context.

Keywords:

• Endurance sport
• perseverance
• personality
• subjective well-being
• triathlon