Leisure Motivation Scale

The Leisure Motivation Scale (LMS), developed by Jacob Beard and Mounir Ragheb in their 1983 Journal of Leisure Research article, measures the psychological and social reasons people give for participating in leisure. Building on Maslow's need theory and the leisure-needs literature, the scale reduces leisure motivation to four broad motives, each represented by twelve items: the intellectual motive (mental activity — learning, exploring, imagining), the social motive (friendship and interpersonal relationships, including the need for esteem), the competence-mastery motive (achievement, challenge, and the testing of skills), and the stimulus-avoidance motive (the drive to escape and to seek rest, solitude, and relaxation). Administered to 1,205 respondents and refined by item and factor analysis, the four subscales achieved reliabilities near .90 and became, alongside the companion Leisure Satisfaction Scale, the most widely used motivation measure in leisure studies and tourism.