In Search of the Harried Leisure Class in Contemporary Society: Time-Use Surveys and Patterns of Leisure Time Consumption

In trying to understand the contemporary work-leisure paradoxes, we go in search for today's harried leisure class and its equanimous counterpart. We apply the relative new method of optimal matching on the continuous time-use data of the pooled Flemish time-use survey of 1999 and 2004, in order to identify different time-use patterns based on one's leisure time consumption. We then analyse these time-use patterns by combining a multiple classification analysis with socio-demographic measures and ( leisure) time-use characteristics, which allows us to identify today's harried leisure class on the one hand the opposite "equanimous leisure class" on the other hand. It turns out that the members of today's harried leisure class combine a great amount of cultural and material resources with the experience of time pressure and voracious and volatile leisure time consumption, whereas the members of the equanimous leisure class mainly consume their leisure time in front of the TV. Typifying these groups based on their consumption characteristics provides useful evidence for the integration of time use in the research field of consumer policy.