The effects of neighborhood views containing multiple environmental features on road traffic noise perception at dwellings

Visiting nature is associated with lower socioeconomic inequalities in well-being in Wales

Natural environments can promote well-being through multiple mechanisms. Many studies have investigated relationships between residential green/blue space (GBS) and well-being, fewer explore relationships with actual use of GBS. We used a nationally representative survey, the National Survey for Wales, anonymously linked with spatial GBS data to investigate associations of well-being with both residential GBS and time in nature (N = 7631). Both residential GBS and time spent in nature were associated with subjective well-being. Higher green-ness was associated with lower well-being, counter to hypotheses (predicting the Warwick and Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS): Enhanced vegetation index β =  - 1.84, 95% confidence interval (CI) - 3.63, - 0.05) but time spent in nature was associated with higher well-being (four hours a week in nature vs. none β = 3.57, 95% CI 3.02, 4.13). There was no clear association between nearest GBS proximity and well-being. In support of the equigenesis theory, time spent in nature was associated with smaller socioeconomic inequalities in well-being. The difference in WEMWBS (possible range 14-70) between those who did and did not live in material deprivation was 7.7 points for those spending no time in nature, and less at 4.5 points for those spending time in nature up to 1 h per week. Facilitating access and making it easier for people to spend time in nature may be one way to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in well-being.

The interactive effects of traffic sound and window views on indoor soundscape perceptions in the residential area

Environmental noise has long been considered one of the unwelcome aspects of urban life at home. An increasing number of scholars have studied improving indoor acoustic comfort by using the soundscape approach. However, much uncertainty still exists about the relationship between the audio-visual environment and indoor soundscape perception. The current study investigates the interaction effects of traffic sound and window views on indoor soundscape perceptions in residential contexts. Thirty-two participants were presented with 51 scenarios (a combination of 17 window views and three aural stimuli) and requested to assess their soundscape perceptions in a VR experiment. Results showed that traffic noise could moderate the impact of nature, road, and building views on pleasantness, while it can also moderate the effect of water sound and road view on eventfulness. In particular, natural window views were found not to lead to a more pleasant indoor soundscape necessarily; natural window views even decrease the pleasantness of indoor soundscape in the case of heavy traffic noise outside the window. Besides, overall visual indicators, including complexity and openness, have an interactive effect with traffic sound on pleasantness. Last, pleasantness is found to be associated with the appropriateness of indoor soundscape.

Audiovisual Bimodal and Interactive Effects for Soundscape Design of the Indoor Environments: A Systematic Review

A growing number of soundscape studies involving audiovisual factors have been conducted; however, their bimodal and interactive effects on indoor soundscape evaluations have not yet been thoroughly reviewed. The overarching goal of this systematic review was to develop the framework for designing sustainable indoor soundscapes by focusing on audiovisual factors and relations. A search for individual studies was conducted through three databases and search engines: Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed. Based on the qualitative reviews of the selected thirty papers, a framework of indoor soundscape evaluation concerning visual and audiovisual indicators was proposed. Overall, the greenery factor was the most important visual variable, followed by the water features and moderating noise annoyance perceived by occupants in given indoor environments. The presence of visual information and sound-source visibility would moderate perceived noise annoyance and influence other audio-related perceptions. Furthermore, sound sources would impact multiple perceptual responses (audio, visual, cognitive, and emotional perceptions) related to the overall soundscape experiences when certain visual factors are interactively involved. The proposed framework highlights the potential use of the bimodality and interactivity of the audiovisual factors for designing indoor sound environments in more effective ways.

Associations and effect modification between transportation noise, self-reported response to noise and the wider determinants of health: A narrative synthesis of the literature

Noise and health guidance to date have focused on the direct links between noise and health outcomes such as annoyance, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and cognitive impairment in schoolchildren. However, noise is a psychosocial stressor, and there are individual studies showing that exposure to noise or the self-reported responses to noise may affect health through interactions with the wider determinants of health and well-being including physical activity, use of green spaces and social interactions. Despite this emerging evidence concerning potential impacts of noise on the wider determinants of health, literature in the field remains dispersed and unsynthesised. This study seeks to synthetize evidence on different relationships between transportation noise, self-reported responses to noise and the wider determinants of health using a systematic review methodology. The search was conducted in Medline, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus on articles published from 2000 to 2017. This led to the review of 76 papers which satisfied the inclusion criteria. Despite strong heterogeneity in the studies' methodologies and indicators used, there is some evidence that noise exposure and responses to noise such as annoyance and disturbance are associated with people's lifestyle, recreational activities as well as the local economy of the neighbourhood. On the other hand, there are some wider determinants of health, mainly those related to the built and natural environment, which modify the relationship between noise exposure and self-reported responses to noise. In particular, greenness, having access to quiet areas, and covering noise sources either visually or acoustically with natural features seems to decrease people's negative responses to noise. Results indicate that transportation noise has the potential to affect health through various pathways, and a holistic approach is needed to capture all the effects.

Residential green is associated with reduced annoyance to road traffic and railway noise but increased annoyance to aircraft noise exposure

BACKGROUND

In recent years, residential green and availability of neighbourhood green spaces came into focus as a potential means to reduce transportation noise annoyance. Literature suggests that various characteristics of residential green may play a role, namely, greenness of the residential areas as quantified by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), visible vegetation from home, and the presence of public green spaces as identified by land use classification data (LU-green), as well as their accessibility and noise pollution (i.e., transportation noise exposure within green areas, how loud/quiet they are). So far, studies mostly focused on road traffic noise in urban areas.

OBJECTIVE

We investigated the effects of residential green on noise annoyance, accounting for different transportation noise sources as well as for the degree of urbanisation.

METHODS

We complemented the data set of the recent Swiss SiRENE survey on road traffic, railway and aircraft noise annoyance with a wide range of "green" metrics, and investigated their association with annoyance by means of logistic regression analysis (generalized estimating equations).

RESULTS

Increasing residential green was found to be associated with reduced road traffic and railway noise annoyance, but increased aircraft noise annoyance. The overall effect corresponded to equivalent level reductions of about 6 dB for road traffic and 3 dB for railway noise, but to an increase of about 10 dB for aircraft noise, when residential green increased from "not much green" (5th percentile of the study sample distribution) to "a lot of green" (95th percentile). Overall, NDVI and LU-green were particularly strongly linked to annoyance. The effects of visible vegetation from home and accessibility and/or quietness of green spaces were, overall, less strong, but depended on the degree of urbanisation. For road traffic noise, visible vegetation and accessibility of green spaces seem to particularly strongly reduce annoyance in cities, while quiet green spaces are more effective in rural areas.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study emphasizes that residential green should be fostered by city planners, particularly in densely populated areas.

Neighbourhood blue space, health and wellbeing: The mediating role of different types of physical activity

BACKGROUND

Evidence suggests that living near blue spaces such as the coast, lakes and rivers may be good for health and wellbeing. Although greater levels of physical activity (PA) may be a potential mechanism, we know little about the types of PA that might account for this.

OBJECTIVES

To explore the mediating role of: a) 'watersports' (e.g. sailing/canoeing); b) 'on-land outdoor PA' in natural/mixed settings (e.g. walking/running/cycling); and, c) 'indoor/other PA' (e.g. gym/squash) in the relationships between residential blue space availability and health outcomes.

METHODS

Using data from the Health Survey for England (n = 21,097), we constructed a path model to explore whether weekly volumes of each PA type mediate any of the relationships between residential blue space availability (coastal proximity and presence of freshwater) and self-reported general and mental health, controlling for green space density and a range of socio-economic factors at the individual- and area-level.

RESULTS

Supporting predictions, living nearer the coast was associated with better self-reported general and mental health and this was partially mediated by on-land outdoor PA (primarily walking). Watersports were more common among those living within 5kms of the coast, but did not mediate associations between coastal proximity and health. Presence of freshwater in the neighbourhood was associated with better mental health, but this effect was not mediated by PA.

CONCLUSIONS

Although nearby blue spaces offer potentially easier access to watersports, relatively few individuals in England engage in them and thus they do not account for positive population health associations. Rather, the benefits to health from coastal living seem, at least in part, due to participation in land-based outdoor activities (especially walking). Further research is needed to explore the mechanisms behind the relationship between freshwater presence and mental health.

Effect of birdsongs and traffic noise on pedestrian walking speed during different seasons

Many studies have explored the effects of auditory and visual stimuli on the perception of an environment. However, there is a lack of investigations examining direct behavioral responses to noise in specific environments. In this study, a behavioral variable, walking speed, was analyzed, as a response to the sounds and visual features of a specific environment. The study examined the effects of birdsongs compared to traffic noise on walking speed in a real outdoor urban environment. It was supposed that the interaction of audition and vision in the perception of an environment may also be shaped by the perceived congruence of the visual and auditory features of the environment. The participants (N = 87 and N = 65), young university students, walked along a 1.8-km urban route. They listened to a soundtrack of crowded city noise or birdsongs, or they walked in the real outdoor environment without listening to any acoustic stimuli. To investigate the effect of the congruence between acoustic and visual stimuli, the experiment was conducted in two different seasons (fall and spring). The results did not show significant differences between the crowded city noise condition and the real outdoor condition. Listening to the soundtrack with birdsongs decreased walking speed, but this effect was significant only in the experiment conducted in spring. These findings can be explained in terms of the congruence between the sounds and the visual environment. The findings raise questions regarding the restorative function of urban greenery during different seasons.

Modelling noise annoyance responses to combined sound sources and views of sea, road traffic, and mountain greenery

This paper studies the effect of human perception of visual and audio settings in an urban environment on annoyance. Video clips were projected onto a window panel of a living room to simulate neighborhood views containing different percentages of sea, mountain greenery, and road. These video clips were combined with audio stimuli corresponding to the congruent traffic and sea sounds. 246 participants were presented with 11 audio-visual stimuli and requested to respond to questions after the presentation. The collected responses were used to formulate a multivariate ordered logit model to predict the probability of evoking a high annoyance response. The findings revealed that views embracing mountain greenery close-by could enhance annoyance, which is contrary to other findings that greenery could always moderate noise annoyance. In addition, a 60% sea view was found to be able to yield 1 dB equivalent reduction in total sound pressure level. The trade-off was comparable to that achieved by having sea sound at a level 5 dB higher than road traffic noise. Exposure to road traffic noise level being 3 dB higher than sea sound level (i.e., signal-to-noise ratio = -3) together with a 60% sea view could provide an additional 1.5 dB equivalent reduction.

Improving the soundscape quality of urban areas exposed to aircraft noise by adding moving water and vegetation

Research shows that the sight of trees and the sound of moving water improve the soundscape quality of outdoor spaces exposed to road traffic noise. Effects are attributed to non-energetic masking, visual attentional distortion, and congruence between sight and hearing. However, there is no literature on such effects for aircraft noise. Aircraft noise varies from other traffic sources, i.e., in terms temporal variability, duration, and spectral composition, complicating the application of findings without further research. In a virtual reality experiment reported in this article, participants were asked to rate scenarios with different sound levels of flyovers, urban typologies, vegetation, and/ or water features. The results showed a significant improvement of the soundscape quality when (1) vegetation and (2) moving water were present, and especially when (3) vegetation and moving water were presented simultaneously, especially for residential areas in terms of the relative change. Moving water also reduced the saliency of aircraft flyovers significantly, changing the constellation of fore- and background sounds. Moving water raised the perceived audibility of the most dominant sound source too, which could be attributed to non-energetic masking effects. The findings of this study indicate that soundscape strategies can complement noise abatement in areas prone to aircraft noise.

Personal Audiovisual Aptitude Influences the Interaction Between Landscape and Soundscape Appraisal

It has been established that there is an interaction between audition and vision in the appraisal of our living environment, and that this appraisal is influenced by personal factors. Here, we test the hypothesis that audiovisual aptitude influences appraisal of our sonic and visual environment. To measure audiovisual aptitude, an auditory deviant detection experiment was conducted in an ecologically valid and complex context. This experiment allows us to distinguish between accurate and less accurate listeners. Additionally, it allows to distinguish between participants that are easily visually distracted and those who are not. To do so, two previously conducted laboratory experiments were re-analyzed. The first experiment focuses on self-reported noise annoyance in a living room context, whereas the second experiment focuses on the perceived pleasantness of using outdoor public spaces. In the first experiment, the influence of visibility of vegetation on self-reported noise annoyance was modified by audiovisual aptitude. In the second one, it was found that the overall appraisal of walking across a bridge is influenced by audiovisual aptitude, in particular when a visually intrusive noise barrier is used to reduce highway traffic noise levels. We conclude that audiovisual aptitude may affect the appraisal of the living environment.