**1. Introduction**

Life satisfaction, a cognitive evaluation of satisfaction with overall life quality, acts as a key dimension of subjective well-being [1]. It has been defined as "a positive assessment of an individual's whole life according to the criteria determined by him or her" [2]. Foreign governments (e.g., U.S., Australia, and New Zealand) have used life satisfaction as an important indicator of people's well-being [3]. Previous studies have confirmed that life satisfaction can be predicted by variables such as personality, self-esteem, income, marriage, and societal factors [4–8]. Although life satisfaction is not equal to well-being, exploring other predictors of life satisfaction is necessary to understand what makes people's lives better [9].

Previous studies have confirmed that, among various predictors of life satisfaction, physically active leisure can play a significant role in improving people's life satisfaction [3,10]. More importantly, Sato et al. [3,11] found that participation in long-distance running exerts a positive influence on how people assess their lives. Per statistical data, in 2020, over 1800 marathon events (with over 800 participants) were held in 337 cities all over China, attracting more than 7.13 million participants, a significant increase in comparison with 5.84 million runners in 2018 (Chinese Athletica Association, 2020). Recent studies confirm that being seriously involved in long-distance running has a positive impact on the marathoner's subjective well-being [11,12].

Bryan [13] developed a conceptual framework named "recreation specialization" to generalize the various behaviors that individuals had exhibited when participating in leisure sports activities. It refers to a continuum that outdoor recreation participants

**Citation:** Tian, H.; Zhou, W.; Qiu, Y.; Zou, Z. The Role of Recreation Specialization and Self-Efficacy on Life Satisfaction: The Mediating Effect of Flow Experience. *IJERPH* **2022**, *19*, 3243. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/ijerph19063243

Academic Editors: V. K. Kumar and Jasmin Tahmaseb-McConatha

Received: 27 January 2022 Accepted: 8 March 2022 Published: 9 March 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

usually advanced from general interest and low engagemen<sup>t</sup> to specialized interest and high engagemen<sup>t</sup> [14]. Most studies evaluated the degree of an individual's recreation specialization using a three-dimensional construct [15], which included behavior, cognition, and affect. Using this construct, scholars have dedicated themselves to examining the influence of recreation specialization on other variables such as successful aging, place identity, and environmental attitude [16–18]. Moreover, existing literature also provided some evidence to explore the influence of recreation specialization on life satisfaction. According to the results of recent studies, the affect dimension of recreation specialization showed a positive effect on people's life satisfaction [3,4]. Individuals who engaged in more leisure time activities reported experiencing higher levels of life satisfaction and health benefits [10,19].

As described in previous literature, self-efficacy has been defined as "individual judgments of one's ability to organize and execute courses of action to designated goals through evaluating its level, generality, and strength across contexts and activities" [20]. It reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's motivation, behavior, and social environment. Under normal conditions, the stronger an individual's self-efficacy and outcome expectation, the more likely he or she will begin and persist with a given activity [21]. During exercise, people with a higher level of self-efficacy were usually found to show a greater sense of energy, expend less effort, and experience more positive feelings [22]. Recent studies have found that general self-efficacy was strongly related to college students' life satisfaction [23,24]. Therefore, it appears runners' life satisfaction can improve as their self-efficacy increases.

Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept of flow experience to understand why individuals become committed to certain activities without any material or economic benefits [25]. It has been defined as an enjoyable, intrinsically rewarding psychological state characterized by total concentration in a particular activity, exclusion of irrelevant thoughts, a sense of everything clicking together, and involvement in challenging situations [26]. Flow experience was generally conceptualized in nine key dimensions, three describing preconditions for flow occurrence (e.g., challenge-skill balance, clear goals, and action-awareness) and six reflecting characteristics of the experience (e.g., transformation of sense of time and sense of control) [25,27]. Recent research in sport has mainly focused on the antecedents of flow experience [28], the role of flow experience on performance [29], and interventions to increase flow [30]. Through structural equation modeling, scholars have verified that satisfaction with event levels fully mediated the role of flow experience in people's overall life satisfaction [31]. However, the relationship between flow experience and life satisfaction has not been documented.

The development of the concept of recreation specialization came from the study of individuals who continuously seek new challenges and advance their skills and knowledge in performing a specific activity [14]. People tend to avoid their leisure pursuits when they become bored and frustrated while negotiating factors such as poor weather, injuries, or lack of a partner [32]. Experiencing flow, however, tends to be related to the outcomes of self-enrichment, self-expression, and self-actualization in those individuals who pursue their leisure time activities seriously [33]. Leisure involvement, equivalent to the affect dimension of recreation specialization, has been found to have a positive impact on people's flow experience [34]. As indicated by Wu et al. [35], specialized individuals were more likely to report experiencing more intense flow experiences than those who were inexperienced. Additionally, recreation specialization moderated the role of flow experience on addiction tendencies.

Prior studies have provided evidence to support the role of self-efficacy in the experiencing of flow. For example, in cross-national comparative research, scholars have found self-efficacy to be positively related to undergraduate students' flow experience and engagemen<sup>t</sup> [36]. Another study showed that the greater the self-efficacy, the higher the flow frequency and the higher the challenge and skill levels, which, in turn, predicted flow over two time periods among teachers when engaged in their work-related activities [37].

In sports, recent research also revealed that self-efficacy has a significant positive correlation with elderly adults' flow experience [38].

When people are highly involved in long-distance running, they tend to engage in regular daily exercise, make significant efforts to improve their knowledge and skills, and show a strong willingness to continue running [39]. As specialization progresses, such individuals will come to exhibit a high level of flow experience, reap various durable benefits, and report a more satisfying life [29,31]. Extant literature suggests that a higher degree of self-efficacy is more likely to correlate with people's life satisfaction [23,24]. As mentioned above, individuals with higher levels of self-efficacy are more likely to overcome various difficulties [32], experience a psychological flow [36–38], and lead a more satisfying life.

In summary, the objectives of this study are twofold. The first is to examine the direct effects among self-efficacy, recreation specialization, flow experience, and life satisfaction. The second is to examine the indirect effects of flow experience on the relationship between self-efficacy, recreation specialization, and life satisfaction. Based on the review of literature as described above, a model was proposed as shown in Figure 1. The hypotheses of this study are as follows:

**Figure 1.** Proposed conceptual model.

**Hypothesis 1 (H1).** *Runners' self-efficacy has direct positive effects on flow experience*.

**Hypothesis 2 (H2).** *Runners' recreation specialization has direct positive effects on flow experience*.

**Hypothesis 3 (H3).** *Runners' flow experience has direct positive effects on life satisfaction*.

**Hypothesis 4 (H4).** *Runners' self-efficacy has direct positive effects on life satisfaction*.

**Hypothesis 5 (H5).** *Runners' recreation specialization has direct positive effects on life satisfaction*.

**Hypothesis 6 (H6).** *Runners' flow experience mediates the role of self-efficacy on life satisfaction*.

**Hypothesis 7 (H7).** *Runners' flow experience mediates the role of recreation specialization on life satisfaction*.
