EMPIRICAL RESEARCH Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction in Leisure Activities and Adolescents ’ Life Satisfaction

Abstract Participation in leisure activities is an important arena for the positive psychological development of ado-lescents. The present study set out to examine the relation-ship between adolescents ’ satisfaction of the psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy in their participation in leisure activities and their perceived life satisfaction. The aim was to identify the extent to which satisfaction of the three needs explained the relationship between participation in leisure activities and life satisfac-tion. These proposed mechanisms were based on previous empirical work and the theoretical frameworks of self-determination theory, and were tested in a nationally rep-resentative sample of Norwegian adolescents (N = 3,273) aged 15 and 16 years (51.8 % boys). The structural equation analysis showed that competence and relatedness satisfac-tion fully mediated the association between participation in activities and life satisfaction. Autonomy satisfaction had a direct positive effect on life satisfaction but did not show any mediation effect. The positive processes of psycholog-ical need satisfaction, and especially the need for compe-tence and relatedness, experienced in the leisure activity domain thus seem to be beneficial for adolescents ’ well-being. These findings add to previous research investigating the positive impact of need satisfaction in other important domains in the lives of children and adolescents