Relations between Objective and Perceived Built Environments and the Modifying Role of Individual Socioeconomic Position. A Cross-Sectional Study on Traffic Noise and Urban Green Space in a Large German City

Abstract

Perceived annoyance due to traffic noise and lack of urban green space is mostly determined using data from self-administered questionnaires. However, there is still no clear evidence to what extent such perceived measures are related to objectively assessed environmental data and whether socioeconomic dimensions modify such relationships. In a cross-sectional study in Dortmund, Germany, georeferenced home addresses from parents with preschool aged children were used to analyse relations between exposures to objectively measured green space and traffic noise and subjective annoyance due to noise and lack of green space with the additional consideration of socioeconomic characteristics as effect modifiers. Higher perceived annoyance correlated with higher objectively measured traffic noise and lower objectively measured green, respectively. Stratified logistic regression models indicated a modifying role of socioeconomic characteristics. The strengths of associations between objectively measured environmental exposures and perceived annoyance differed by socioeconomic strata. Especially for noise, odds ratios were higher in low socioeconomic strata than in high socioeconomic strata. Therefore, using objective measures of the built environment as a proxy for individual perception should be made with caution as negative relations between objectively assessed built environments and health could be underestimated when considering individual socioeconomic position only as a confounder.

Assessment Methods and Factors Determining Positive Indoor Soundscapes in Residential Buildings: A Systematic Review

“…As far as income is concerned, depending on the study, people with higher income resulted being likely to feel more annoyed [16] or less annoyed [22] by noise, while no significant impact was found in other two studies [48,49]. Unemployed people were also found more likely to feel annoyed by traffic [22] or wind turbine [28] noise than their employed counterparts.…”

“…As far as income is concerned, depending on the study, people with higher income resulted being likely to feel more annoyed [16] or less annoyed [22] by noise, while no significant impact was found in other two studies [48,49]. Unemployed people were also found more likely to feel annoyed by traffic [22] or wind turbine [28] noise than their employed counterparts. Being single parents (family status) [22] or living as tenants (home ownership) [26] were associated with a higher noise annoyance, while no association was found between perceived noise control and home ownership [26].…”

“…Regarding the level of education, a clear trend cannot be found in the reviewed studies. Two of them found more educated people being likely to feel more annoyed by noise [16,49], two studies reported the opposite [22,45] while one study found no significant effect [48].…”

“…Factors associated to the physical character of the acoustic environment affect in different ways the dimensions underlying its perception by building users. Noise annoyance ratings were reported to be positively related to sound levels [15][16][17][18][22][23][24][25][26]28,32,35,37,41,43,45,46,48,49,51] and negatively related to the source distance [32,42,43]. Acoustic comfort was also related to sound level [19].…”

“…Selected studies make use of different study designs, that are laboratory tests [16,[18][19][20][21]24,25,32,34,36,[41][42][43]47] and field campaigns based on socio-acoustic [15,17,22,23,26,28,35,37,39,40,45,46,[48][49][50][51], social surveys [29][30][31]33,38,44], or soundscape assessments [27]. Laboratory studies evaluate testers' response to experimental stimuli in laboratory settings, under controlled conditions.…”