Leisure Statisfaction and Acculturative Stress: The Case of Chinese-Canadian Immigrants

The purpose of this study was to examine the causal relationship between leisure satisfaction and acculturative stress. Chinese immigrants to Canada were surveyed six months apart. Four kinds of acculturative stress (all at Time 2) were each hierarchically regressed on: age and gender, years in Canada, the corresponding stressor, and six types of leisure satisfaction (all at Time 1). Results indicated that: (a) social leisure satisfaction lessened loss/nostalgia-based stress; and (b) social, psychological, and aesthetic leisure satisfaction mitigated, while physiological leisure satisfaction exacerbated, perceived discrimination-based stress. These results suggest that, while facilitating certain types of leisure satisfaction (e.g., social) may be beneficial, fostering others (e.g., physiological) could have undesirable consequences.