An Economic and Sociological Analysis of Workplace Stress Relief
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/7554w088Keywords:
Leisure Economics, Painting, Dancing, Stress Relief, Work-Life BalanceAbstract
Under the context of involution and overwork in China’s workplace, contemporary office workers experience heavy work pressure and sub-healthy status, and work-life imbalance. This thesis uses literature review and comparative analysis, using theories including leisure economics, opportunity cost, diminishing marginal utility and game theory, to investigate the significance of painting and dancing as regular leisure activities. After a comparison between their cost, utility and long-term benefits with other entertainment like going to bars, karaoke singing and short-video viewing, it can be found that painting and dancing as leisure choices are low-cost and productive in nature, contributing towards physical and psychological exhaustion recovery, regulation of emotions, enhancement of personal temperament, and generating implicit values such as social capital and extra income. On the contrary, traditional collective entertainment has a high cost and cannot generate any sustainable advantages except for temporary pleasure. With the foundation of the prisoners’ dilemma of involvement in the workplace, light art leisure can enable people to think out of utilitarian mindsets, enrich personal values and reduce competitiveness pressure. Limitations of the research include a lack of sufficient empirical data and a limited research scope. Suggestions have been raised for further academic research and daily leisure management.
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