Trajectories of geocachers through tourism, serious leisure and social worlds theory.

Abstract

Geocaching is a leisure game that appeared in the summer of 2000 and it is mainly based on searching and placing geocaches (small boxes) with the help of GPS signal. The aim of this study is to investigate and to review the relationships between the concepts of leisure and tourism in regards to the nature of the game as serious leisure and review the social worlds organization of it. A qualitative approach with semi-structured personal interviews among 12 players with different levels of involvement in the game has been conducted. The belonging of Geocaching as serious leisure activity has been tested empirically in relation with the trans-situational typologies of social worlds theory. Also it has been verified whether the social worlds theory is fitting the Geocaching reality. The key results brought up concepts of saturation, translated into few game resources that is not allowing the game to be leisure, and retrogression concerning long time players who don’t have a frequent activity in the game. The retrogression players belong in the social worlds tourist typology. Geocaching has been confirmed to be a serious leisure activity, and the social worlds typologies have helped to differentiate the level of geocachers implication in the game. This study can be transferred to other types of social world organization where are involved serious leisure participants.