Psychological Well-being and Demographic Factors can Mediate Soundscape Pleasantness and Eventfulness: A large sample study

Abstract

There is a great deal of literature on contributing environmental factors of soundscape, the perception of the acoustic environment by humans in context. Yet the impact of some contextual and person-related factors is largely unknown. From the questionnaire, adapted from ISO12913-2 and the WHO-5 well-being index, three questions arose: are there differences in Pleasantness and Eventfulness of soundscape among different acoustic environments; are high levels of psychological well-being associated with increased Pleasantness and Eventfulness ratings; and is soundscape Pleasantness and Eventfulness consistent among different age and gender groups? The sample comprised 1180 individual questionnaires, 621 females (52.6%), 532 males (45.1%), mean age 34.95 years, SD= 15.62, collected from eleven urban locations. Hierarchical clustering analysis was done on the mean of each sound source question for each survey location resulting in three clusters of locations based on sound source composition: Natural-dominant, Traffic-dominant and Mixed-sources. A Kruskal-Wallis was conducted to compare the mean Pleasantness and Eventfulness scores of the three clusters, demonstrating that the soundscape assessment was significantly different depending on sound source composition. Multiple linear regression models were used to analyse the relationship between psychological well-being, age, and gender with soundscape Pleasantness and Eventfulness. Our results indicated first that the positive psychological state was associated with Pleasantness in the all-locations and mixed-sources clusters, and with Eventfulness in the traffic-dominant cluster. Secondly, while age was linked to Pleasantness in all clusters it was merely associated with the Eventfulness in the all-locations cluster. Lastly, gender was associated with Pleasantness only in the all-locations cluster. These findings offer empirical grounds for developing theories of the contextual factors on soundscape.

An in-Situ Investigation of Office Soundscape Perceptual Evaluation Methodologies

“…26 Similar effects have been observed in exterior soundscape studies, and were attributed to the concept that well-being underlies perception of the external world. 20 Moderate positive correlations between ISO Pleasant and both overall work-related satisfaction and perceived productivity scores further uphold this conclusion. While causality has not been proven, these findings reiterate the important relationship between the office environment and employee well-being.…”

“…17 Gender was similarly associated with changes in ISO Pleasant score, with male participants observing a higher median than females: this is in contradiction with exterior soundscape studies. 20 Aural diversity was also found to mediate ISO Pleasant, with those self-identifying as being aurally diverse yielding a lower median score than participants who did not. This highlights the necessity for further discussion: should office environments be designed for the average occupant or those with the most sensitive needs?…”

“…8,17 Sounds from human beings were found to contribute positively to ISO Eventful scores, corresponding with exterior soundscape studies. 11,20 These findings imply divergency between sound source compositions leading to increased pleasantness and eventfulness scores.…”

The effects of visual landscape and traffic type on soundscape perception in high-rise residential estates of an urban city

“…One such discrepancy may be the emotional aspect of rating each soundscape since females are generally found to be more sensitive in emotional appraisals of sounds that are emotionally meaningful such as church bells, music, or children's voices. [38,72] There could be a bias towards favoring more extreme ratings in the appraisals for affective soundscape qualities. Thirdly, the range of participant's age group is between 21 to 27 years old.…”

A Quantitative and Qualitative Experimental Framework for the Evaluation of Urban Soundscapes: Application to the City of Sidi Bou Saïd

“…This notion of an urban sound environment perceived by humans was explicitly mentioned and later popularized by Schafer in his book "The Tuning of the World (The Soundscape)" [21]. A soundscape is a constituent element of the quality of an urban environment [26][27][28][29].…”