Bonsai in the time of covid: The miniature, the social and the solitary

Abstract

The study sought to find out to what extent engagement with serious leisure, in this case bonsai growing, can help people deal with challenging times, such as a global pandemic. In particular, it was concerned with how bonsai enthusiasts use their hobbies to manage uncertainty and stress during the lockdown and how they have shared their lived experiences via social media. The researcher employed a user-generated content analysis approach to address the research questions and explored a collection of comments from a sample of the most visited bonsai videos posted on YouTube during the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The serious leisure perspective has been used as a theoretical framework to conceptualise the data based on the qualities that differentiate serious leisure from casual leisure. The findings showed that engagement in this hobby helps bonsai enthusiasts to develop social connectedness and cope with their stress caused by the pandemic.