Mitchell, Andrew;
Erfanian, Mercede;
Soelistyo, Christopher;
Oberman, Tin;
Kang, Jian;
Aldridge, Robert;
Xue, Jing-Hao;
(2022)
Effects of Soundscape Complexity on Urban Noise Annoyance Ratings: A Large-Scale Online Listening Experiment.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
, 19
(22)
, Article 14872. 10.3390/ijerph192214872.
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Abstract
Noise annoyance has been often reported as one of the main adverse effects of noise exposure on human health, and there is consensus that it relates to several factors going beyond the mere energy content of the signal. Research has historically focused on a limited set of sound sources (e.g., transport and industrial noise); only more recently is attention being given to more holistic aspects of urban acoustic environments and the role they play in the noise annoyance perceptual construct. This is the main approach promoted in soundscape studies, looking at both wanted and unwanted sounds. In this study, three specific aspects were investigated, namely: (1) the effect of different sound sources combinations, (2) the number of sound sources present in the soundscape, and (3) the presence of individual sound source, on noise annoyance perception. For this purpose, a large-scale online experiment was carried out with 1.2k+ participants, using 2.8k+ audio recordings of complex urban acoustic environments to investigate how they would influence the perceived noise annoyance. Results showed that: (1) the combinations of different sound sources were not important, compared, instead, to the number of sound sources identified in the soundscape recording (regardless of sound sources type); (2) the annoyance ratings expressed a minimum when any two clearly distinguishable sound sources were present in a given urban soundscape; and (3) the presence (either in isolation or combination) of traffic-related sound sources increases noise annoyance, while the presence (either in isolation or combination) of nature-related sound sources decreases noise annoyance.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Effects of Soundscape Complexity on Urban Noise Annoyance Ratings: A Large-Scale Online Listening Experiment |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3390/ijerph192214872 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192214872 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 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/). |
| Keywords: | sound source recognition; noise annoyance; sound perception; soundscape; urban environments |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159335 |
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