A grounded theory approach to the subjective understanding of urban soundscape in Sheffield

Abstract

The aim of this study is to gain a greater insight into the factors that affect individuals' preferences and understanding of urban soundscapes. Based on a grounded theory approach, with 53 participants in Sheffield, five categories have been revealed for the subjective understanding of soundscape: soundscape definition, soundscape memory, soundscape sentiment, soundscape expectation, and soundscape aesthetics. More specifically, to some extent, the value people place on sounds does not lie in the sound itself or its physical properties but in the positive or negative behaviors associated with sounds. Some long-term soundscape memory was preserved because the sounds correlated to something profound in people's mind to some degree. Most people like to use two evaluation criteria, namely favorite sound and annoying sound, to reflect their soundscape sentiment, but emotion is also an important part of psychological stratification, which includes joyful, angry, sad, despair, and afraid. People hope that soundscape will change as time goes by, towards the soundscape of natural and comfortable sounds mixed with entertainment, as well as simple sounds containing peaceful and joyful information; notably, people look Fangfang Liu & Jian Kang: Cities

Spatial Audio for Soundscape Design: Recording and Reproduction

“…Narrative interview and social survey usually deals with long-term responses or recalled experiences based on the real acoustic environment [12][13][14]. In contrast, the virtual acoustic environment, created by recording followed by reproduction, are usually evaluated in a laboratory conditions [6,11].…”

A perceptual model of smellscape pleasantness

“…It offers a systematic framework to guide data collection process as data analysis via coding, memo-writing, categorising and theorising (Charmaz, 2006). Meanwhile, in the field of soundscape, which is closely related to smellscape, Grounded Theory has been approved useful to understand people's perceptions and generate parameters contributing to subjective evaluations (see Fiebig & Schulte-Fortkamp, 2004;Liu & Kang, 2016). The application of Grounded Theory will enable this study to stay open to emerged indicators from people's own descriptions and evaluations and construct an evaluation framework grounded from the data.…”

A comparative study on the effect of soundscape and landscape on tourism experience

“…However, many studies have focused overly on landscape, which led to the “tyranny of the visual” (Liu et al, ). But recently, the effect and significance of sound and soundscape have received attention (Aletta, Kang, & Axelsson, ; Liu & Kang, ; Romero, Maffei, Brambilla, & Ciaburro, ).…”

“…The former refers to the environment composed of a variety of sounds, with a focus on the acoustics; the latter focuses on human perception and is related to one's memory and emotions (Aletta et al, ). That is to say, soundscape is more than sound itself; rather, it highlights listeners' perceptions and feelings (Liu & Kang, ). Thus, the core elements of soundscape include sound, listener, and environment (Liu et al, ).…”