The Effect of Recreation Experience on Psychological Well-Being: A Research on Generation Y

People try to cope with the challenges of stressful city life by participating in recreation activities for various reasons such as renewing, socializing and being physically and mentally healthy. Psychological well-being gives information about how individuals evaluate themselves and the quality of their lives. The experience gained from recreational activities plays an important role in achieving positive or negative effects on people. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of recreation experience on psychological well-being. The research is a quantitative study and the data were obtained from the Y generation individuals who were born between 1980-1999 and lived in Istanbul by convenience sampling method. A questionnaire was applied to 238 people and the scales used were translated from English to Turkish and the data were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between recreation experience and psychological well-being. Regression analysis was used to determine the effect of recreation experience on psychological well-being. As a result of the study, it was observed that recreation experience had a low effect level on psychological well-being by 31.1%.