Abundance - the new challenge

Let's enjoy our leisure time today, because according to the latest findings of leisure research, it can hardly get any better. The BAT Leisure Research Institute has now shown the courage to look into the future for the third time with the recently published project study „Leisure 2001“, after having already analysed the future of work and the prospects of life at the beginning of the next millennium.

The population fears a problematic leisure future

From the personal perspective of the majority of the population, future leisure development is associated more with risks than opportunities. The population's hopes are centred on 14 future opportunities, but these are offset by significantly more future risks (20). This was determined for the first time by the BAT Leisure Research Institute in a „Leisure Impact Assessment“.

The feared risks call into question the socio-political statement „more leisure time equals better quality of life“. Eighty-two per cent of the population cite increasing environmental pollution caused by car traffic as the greatest impairment of future quality of life. As many as 73 per cent cite increasing destruction of the landscape by leisure facilities. 75 per cent of respondents see the risk of debt due to consumer frenzy. Other risks include higher crime rates (72 %), leisure accidents (64 %), leisure stress (62 %), loneliness (51 %) and loss of meaning in marriage (56 %).

The future balance is very different between the generations. The younger generation shows the greatest environmental awareness and fears more destruction of nature and the countryside in the future. The older generation, on the other hand, is more socially aware and warns of growing isolation and loneliness. „Abundance is becoming a new challenge for us all,“ says Prof Dr Horst W. Opaschowski, the author of the project study. „More and more people no longer perceive a hierarchy of pleasures in life.“

Among the future opportunities for leisure time, German citizens cite a growing awareness of nature (76 %), more jobs in the leisure industry (74 %), more time for personal interests (73 %), new opportunities for creativity (64 %). The most popular form of happiness after the year 2000 will still be travelling, which 70 percent of respondents (singles 89 %) are looking forward to.

Mobility exceeds the pain threshold

If being mobile and always active becomes the hallmark of the leisure traveller of the future, this will also mean mass transport. The BAT Institute expects that after the year 2000, around a third of the population will be constantly travelling somewhere on short holidays or weekend trips. Overcrowded roads, cities, traffic jams and environmental pollution will lead to an acceptance problem for driving. The shift in thinking towards more environmentally and socially compatible cars and transport as a whole is having an impact. Restrictions and personal sacrifices are imperative if leisure time is not to take place only in artificial leisure oases and recreated natural landscapes on the outskirts of cities. The car as a leisure and holiday vehicle is at stake; car-free leisure and holiday areas are becoming increasingly urgent.

Mass leisure dominates the scene

The age of mass leisure will become a reality in the next decade at the latest. A new dimension of overcrowding will dominate the scene: Cities will then be overcrowded with people, streets with cars, hotels with guests, trains with travellers, there will be too many passers-by on the street, theatres and cinemas will be teeming with spectators. It will become increasingly difficult to find a place for leisure activities. Leisure activities that used to be the preserve of the few or the exception for special occasions will be accessible to almost everyone tomorrow. As a result, the leisure person will have to become a „waiting professional“.

Consumption at any price

According to leisure researchers, consumption is taking on almost intoxicating characteristics. Rising living standards are enabling more and more sections of the population to shop and enjoy themselves beyond their basic needs. Differences between consumption and lifestyle are becoming blurred and individualistic leisure worlds are emerging.

Leisure time is increasingly becoming consumption time. In line with the motto „Out is in“, the number of Germans who regularly go shopping as part of their leisure activities has increased by around half. The downside: the new experience consumers live beyond their means, pay almost exclusively with plastic cards and run up debts. But they don't have a guilty conscience, because shopping is also a refuge from boredom and loneliness. And that is perceived as worse than anything else.

The desire to buy is becoming a way of preventing boredom, a substitute for a good attitude to life. For example, a fifth of all working women up to the age of 34 (21 %) now openly admit: „Sometimes I shop like I'm on a high“. The tendency to make impulse and quick purchases is increasing. „According to Professor Opaschowski, “Buying on the spur of the moment„ means not stopping until a specific item has been found and purchased - regardless of whether you actually need it or can afford it.“.

Escape from boredom: „Thrilling“ and a thirst for adventure

The BAT study paints anything but a rosy picture for the future of leisure time. It is the affluent leisure person who is forgetting how to enjoy himself, who is bored, „addicted to adventure“ or who is becoming aggressive and violent. „Thrilling“ is the name of the new leisure phenomenon: thrills, fear, a mixture of exciting experiences and a willingness to take risks, provide the weary leisure traveller with a new sense of self-worth. In a way, it is a substitute for the former struggle for the necessities of life. The first signs of this can already be seen today, if you think of hooligans, car racers or bungee jumpers.

The search for enhanced experiences will increasingly determine our leisure time in the future. The weariness syndromes resulting from abundance make people inventive. This is especially true for the younger generation, who bemoan the increasing lack of genuine interpersonal relationships and the lack of meaningful goals for a life of leisure.

The constant threat of boredom increases sophistication, the practice of extreme sports, the addiction to fun, but also to exertion, to distraction at almost any price. Today, one in three Germans already feels stressed when they have to be „alone with themselves in complete silence“. The inability to deal with oneself and the non-work part of life will lead to one of the main problems of the next decade.

Future prospects: „Life instead of lifestyle“

Based on the probability that working hours will continue to be reduced in the future and that „the arm of leisure time will therefore become ever longer“, the Hamburg leisure researchers conclude that more and more leisure elements are penetrating almost all areas of daily life. The boundaries between leisure and non-leisure time are becoming more fluid, the „formative power of work is diminishing“. People will no longer automatically perceive work as a constraint and will not simply equate leisure with freedom. However, the question increasingly arises as to where this increase in leisure time will ultimately lead.

Perhaps in the new millennium we will look back wistfully on the good old leisure time of the 80s and 90s. If we maintain our way of life and do not reorient ourselves, the predicted future scenario of leisure is probably inevitable.

The hope, however, lies in a change of course towards a more socially and environmentally compatible leisure development. This is also an issue for politicians, who have hardly dealt with it so far. The BAT project study provides initial guidelines. These include attractive alternatives to consumption or re-investment of the time gained in social tasks: „Life instead of lifestyle“ as a moral change in values towards a new sense of responsibility.

At the transition to a new millennium, which will also be an age of mass leisure, we must create a world in which we want to live, in which we not only have more time to live, but above all more enjoyment of life.