Relationships between digital leisure and happiness among international students during the COVID-19 pandemic: examining a mediation model

ABSTRACTDigital leisure may help international students experience happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is unclear how digital leisure promotes happiness. To address this area of limited research, we identified social support from contexts of digital leisure as digital leisure social support (DLSS) and divided DLSS into digital leisure emotional support (DLES) and digital leisure instrumental support (DLIS) as well as examined relationships among DLES, DLIS, hope, and happiness. A total of 282 international students who attended a private university participated in this study. We used in-person surveys to measure DLES, DLIS, hope, and happiness. We conducted structural equation modelling to analyse the data. Results indicated that high levels of DLES predicted high levels of hope; high levels of hope predicted high levels of happiness; and high levels of DLES predicted high levels of happiness in the mediation model. However, DLIS did not correlate with hope and happiness. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of promoting happiness among international students during these challenging times.KEYWORDS: Digital leisureemotional supporthappinesshopeinstrumental supportsocial support Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsLiang-Chih ChangLiang-Chih Chang is a Professor in the Department of Living Sciences, National Open University, New Taipei City, Taiwan. He specializes in Gerontology, Leisure Education, and Leisure Psychology.John DattiloJohn Dattilo is a Professor of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management in the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State University, USA. With his research he strives to understand variables that enable and constrain leisure experiences and collaboratively examines effects of services facilitating leisure experiences. He synthesizes research by developing models of understanding presented in books such as Inclusive Leisure Services: Grounded in Social Justice, Leisure Education Program Planning, Facilitation Techniques in Therapeutic Recreation, and Inclusive Leisure Services for People with Disabilities all distributed by Sagamore Publishing at http://www.sagamorepub.com/Fei-Hsin HuangFei-Hsin Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism and Leisure, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan City, Taiwan. She specializes in Leisure Activity Planning, Leisure and Healthy Management, and Leisure Education.