Youth Risk-taking and Leisure: A Multifactorial Model in the Italian Context

Abstract

Literature on youth and risk has traditionally been dominated by psycho-dynamic explanations of social action, studied within a set of adult discourses and searching for single causes for risk-taking in practices like the abuse of alcohol and drugs, unprotected sex and dangerous driving. To overcome these limitations, we listened to young Italian people through a survey conducted on a sample of 1,175 secondary school students and aimed at collecting their viewpoints on and experiences of the relationship between risk and leisure. With an awareness of a plurality of factors influencing risk-taking among the young, this study hypothesizes a contiguity between voluntary risk exposure and gender, age, sociocultural family status, and leisure activities. Both statistical textual analysis methods and logistic regression models were applied to reach the results. The findings show different semantic dimensions of risk according to different social factors.