Socioeconomic status and leisure preferences: a test of the omnivore hypothesis with Canadian data

ABSTRACT We examined the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and leisure preferences with Canadian secondary data collected in the 1970s. In leisure studies, there is little to no research drawing on the omnivore hypothesis to examine the relationship between SES and leisure. With the omnivore hypothesis, higher SES is expected to be associated with greater breadth of leisure activities in addition to greater investment in activities associated with higher SES. The cultural omnivore pattern has also largely been associated with a cultural shift during the 1980s with little research on the phenomena before that time period. As expected, higher SES was positively associated with breadth of leisure activities, but negatively associated with time in activities associated with lower SES. Results demonstrated the potential for the cultural omnivore hypothesis to inform our understanding of the ways SES shapes leisure consumption in a Canadian context and questions the time-limited nature of these phenomena.