Although once an overlooked life domain, scholars are devoting increased attention to leisure and its intersection with work. To date, literature on the work-leisure interface assumes that leisure is the opposite of work and that its benefits stem from its ability to offset or counteract work. We offer a more nuanced perspective of leisure, and we propose that serious leisure is similar to, and operates much like, work. Drawing on the integrated model of human energy, we build a novel theoretical model that describes how engagement in work and in serious leisure affects energetic activation, which in turn affects subsequent engagement in both domains. We tested our cross-domain engagement-recovery-engagement model using an idiographic-nomothetic approach in which we followed employees who pursued a goal in their work and serious leisure domains for two months. Our findings regarding the reciprocal effects of human energy (i.e., recovery appraisals) have theoretical implications regarding the conceptualization of the enrichment and depletion processes underlying how work and leisure influence one another, empirical implications regarding the potential to better understand work phenomena through the study of serious leisure, and managerial implications regarding the potential benefits and threats of engaging in serious leisure activities for work.

wlucy2@ceibs.edu