“It is more to do with enjoying yourself in a team environment”: Affective aspects of information seeking in serious leisure activities

This presentation reports selective findings of a qualitative research project about human information behaviour in the context of serious leisure. The presentation provides empirical evidence indicating how affective and emotional factors inspire serious leisure participants to passionately seek, share and produce information about their hobbies, amateurism and volunteering interests. The findings show the joy of information is a fundamental element driving various information activities in this context from forming new information needs to gathering relevant information and sharing it with peers via the social media or through traditional channels such as local newspapers. This enjoyable journey has two facets of personal and social perspectives. In the personal side, information activities generate a sense of intrinsic pleasantness and also serve some greater goals such as personal empowerment and self-actualization. In the social side, information seeking and sharing build information grounds which provide social connectedness, social inclusion and social support. Moreover, the findings are very much compatible with the existing body of knowledge in this area including Fulton’s research about the power of pleasure and positive affect in information seeking.