THE ROLE OF WEARABLE DATA IN THE RECREATIONALVALUE OF ULTRA-TRAIL RUNNING: THE DMSL MODEL FOR SERIOUS LEISURE
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Abstract
Wearable devices can record ultra-trail running as quantitative data across almost the entire activity. This conceptual article examines how wearable self-tracking data change the experience and meaning of ultra-trail running when it is pursued as serious leisure. It also proposes a typology of the roles data play and derives testable propositions with practical implications. Based on an integrative review of 53 sources, it develops the DMSL (Data-Mediated Serious Leisure) model, which classifies data use along two axes: the phase of the activity (before, during, after) and the functional significance of feedback as informational or controlling, following cognitive evaluation theory within self-determination theory. The synthesis yields four roles: planning, pacing, and reviewing, in which data serve an informational function, and self-judging, in which numbers serve a controlling function and which can occur in any phase. The model proposes that the informational roles support the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, whereas self-judging is expected to be associated with need frustration, lower autonomous motivation, leisure becoming a burden, and withdrawal from the activity, as well as with device abandonment, which is not necessarily harmful to the leisure experience. Routine checks of physiological metrics are treated as possible casual leisure embedded in serious leisure. The article contributes the DMSL model, eight propositions, and a synthesis framework that reads data roles through five dimensions of recreational value; the links to recreational value remain predictions to be tested. The model can serve as a conceptual framework for empirical research on running and on other forms of exercise.
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