Non-auditory factors affecting urban soundscape evaluation

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 130; no. 6; pp. 3761 - 3770
• Main Authors: Yong Jeon, Jin, Jik Lee, Pyoung, Young Hong, Joo, Cabrera, Densil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melville, NY Acoustical Society of America 01.12.2011; American Institute of Physics
• Subjects: Acoustics; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Analysis of Variance; Attitude; Audition; Auditory Perception - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Environment Design; Environmental Exposure - analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Humans; Male; Middle Aged; New South Wales; Noise: its effects and control; Perception; Personal Satisfaction; Physics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Sound; Surveys and Questionnaires; Urban Population; Young Adult; New South Wales; Hearing; Urban area; Architectural acoustics; Ambient noise
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.3652902

The aim of this study is to characterize urban spaces, which combine landscape, acoustics, and lighting, and to investigate people's perceptions of urban soundscapes through quantitative and qualitative analyses. A general questionnaire survey and soundwalk were performed to investigate soundscape perception in urban spaces. Non-auditory factors (visual image, day lighting, and olfactory perceptions), as well as acoustic comfort, were selected as the main contexts that affect soundscape perception, and context preferences and overall impressions were evaluated using an 11-point numerical scale. For qualitative analysis, a semantic differential test was performed in the form of a social survey, and subjects were also asked to describe their impressions during a soundwalk. The results showed that urban soundscapes can be characterized by soundmarks, and soundscape perceptions are dominated by acoustic comfort, visual images, and day lighting, whereas reverberance in urban spaces does not yield consistent preference judgments. It is posited that the subjective evaluation of reverberance can be replaced by physical measurements. The categories extracted from the qualitative analysis revealed that spatial impressions such as openness and density emerged as some of the contexts of soundscape perception.