Exploring Laotians' experiences of leisure gambling and sense of place in a casino setting: a case study

Place-related concepts such as place attachment, sense of place, and third places have been developed and applied to leisure studies for the past 30 years (Trentelman, 2009). A large body of literature on leisure and place attachment has focused on outdoor recreation settings and mainly adopted quantitative methods (e.g., William et al., 1992; Stedman, 2003b; Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000; Kyle & Manning, 2003; Kyle et al., 2003), whereas studies on indoor, humanmade, highly controlled, and commercial environments such as casinos are scarce. Meanwhile, the popularity and prevalence of gambling among Asian immigrants is well documented (e.g., Alegría et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2012; Marshall et al., 2009; Wilson et al., 2015). However, few studies on gambling have examined the relationships between the casino space and Asians’ gambling behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the motivations of Laotian immigrants’ casino gambling and other activities in a casino setting. Additionally, this study aimed to explore the relationships between the casino environment, Laotians’ sense of place, and their leisure experiences within the casino space. This study also sought to understand the roles of casinos in local Laotians’ social leisure lives and whether the casino space serves as a third place for them. This study utilized the single instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) with data from semi-structured interviews, nonparticipant observation, and photo elicitation. The audiotaped interviews were transcribed verbatim, and a phronetic iterative approach was applied to conduct the data analyses The findings demonstrated several factors that may have contributed to the prevalence and popularity of casino gambling among Laotian immigrants in the Fresno, California area – namely, the unique geographic location of Fresno, favorable characters of the casino environment, historical/societal aspects, and Laotian’s gambling friendly culture. In addition, the findings also indicated the casino spaces provided local Laotians new venues to participate in traditional social leisure activities including gambling, and to some extent enhanced their social connectedness. Moreover, the findings illustrated that Laotians’ perceived meanings of the casino space were complex and socially constructed. Lastly, the current study provided support for the notion that the casino space may serve as a third place, enriching their social leisure lives. In sum, the findings of this study underscore the importance of using contextualized and cultural perspectives to understand Laotians’ gambling behavior as well as their unique leisure patterns. More importantly, this study suggests a new theoretical approach to research on Asian immigrants’ leisure behavior. In addition to cultural and social-economic factors, the geographic areas in which Asian immigrants live in the host country should also be examined when we study their post-migration leisure activities.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Recreation, Sport, and Tourism

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Xingxing

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shinew, Kimberly
• Payne, Laura
• Lietchy, Toni
• Ostler, Teresa

• Casino Gambling
• Sense Of Place
• Laotian
• Immigration
• Third Place
• Social Leisure

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023, Xingxing Wu

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120307

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120307