The Relation between Neighboring, Tolerance of Diversity and Life Satisfaction, The importance of Recreative Activities for Establishing and Strengthening These Relations

The purpose of this study was to identify the relation between neighboring, Tolerance of Diversity and Life Satisfaction and to examine if recreative activities would be helpful for establishing and/or strengthening these relations. This was a descriptive study and sampling group consists of 197 males (age= 37.56±11.82) and 213 females (age= 34.92±11.17), totally 410 (age= 36.19±11.55) volunteer participants who live in Antalya city centre.In this study, the items “Neighboring” and “Tolerance of Diversity” in Social Capital scales’ developed by Onxy and Bullen (2000) and Turkish adaptation by Ardahan (2012a) and Life Satisfaction (LS) Scale which was developed by Diener et al. (1985) have been used. The data collected by a face to face between the dates between 01st January -30th April 2012, in the process of assessing data, the descriptive statistic means such as frequency (f), percentage (%), average (M), standard deviation (SS), and to examine the correlation between LS and activities in relation to some demographic variables Pearson Correlation test; to examine the differences between marital status and activities Independent Samples T-Test, One-Way ANOVA test and Pearson Correlation Test to examine the difference between activity groups Tukey-b test were performed. Results have been assessed according to significant level 0.01 and 0.05.As a result of this study; it was found that the participants have had medium level of neighboring, tolerance of diversity and LS. When women compared with men, married participants with singles, participants who live in rural areas compared with participants living in rural areas and older participants comparing with younger ones had higher means in neighboring sub items. Besides this, as education level and urbanizing increases, tolerance of diversity increases, too. As neighboring increases, LS increases too. It can be claimed that recreational activities can be used for establishing and strengthening these relations.