Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise: A laboratory study

Abstract

Current literature suggests that wind turbine noise is more annoying than transportation noise. To date, however, it is not known which acoustic characteristics of wind turbines alone, i.e., without effect modifiers such as visibility, are associated with annoyance. The objective of this study was therefore to investigate and compare the short-term noise annoyance reactions to wind turbines and road traffic in controlled laboratory listening tests. A set of acoustic scenarios was created which, combined with the factorial design of the listening tests, allowed separating the individual associations of three acoustic characteristics with annoyance, namely, source type (wind turbine, road traffic), A-weighted sound pressure level, and amplitude modulation (without, periodic, random). Sixty participants rated their annoyance to the sounds. At the same A-weighted sound pressure level, wind turbine noise was found to be associated with higher annoyance than road traffic noise, particularly with amplitude modulation. The increased annoyance to amplitude modulation of wind turbines is not related to its periodicity, but seems to depend on the modulation frequency range. The study discloses a direct link of different acoustic characteristics to annoyance, yet the generalizability to long-term exposure in the field still needs to be verified.

Room Acoustical Parameters as Predictors of Acoustic Comfort in Outdoor Spaces of Housing Complexes

“…It is reasonable to assume that higher (or cumulative) sound pressure levels are generally associated with lower acoustic comfort ratings (see Section 5.6 for a discussion on the effect of sound pressure level on acoustic comfort). This is consistent with other laboratory experiments, whereby "short-term noise annoyance" was reported either not to be significantly affected by increasing playback sequence or to increase with it (Schäffer et al, 2016(Schäffer et al, , 2019Taghipour and Pelizzari, 2019;Taghipour et al, 2019a). Hereby, it is noted that increased noise annoyance is typically associated with decreased acoustic comfort (Yang and Kang, 2005).…”

“…Enabling facilities that invite relatively pleasant sounds, e.g., playing children as well as water features, birds and vegetation (Jeon et al, 2010;De Coensel et al, 2011;Taghipour and Pelizzari, 2019) and avoiding facilities which encourage relatively unpleasant sounds and noisy activities (such as basketball) might improve the overall acoustic comfort in inner yards. This point should be, however, treated with caution, due to inherent differences between shortterm responses in a laboratory setup and long-term effects of the sounds in a living environment (Schäffer et al, 2016;Taghipour et al, 2019a).…”

Effects of Background Sounds on Annoyance Reaction to Foreground Sounds in Psychoacoustic Experiments in the Laboratory: Limits and Consequences

“…Acute annoyance reactions to helicopter noise were investigated under laboratory conditions. The observed annoyance ratings correspond to "short-term annoyance" [27] or "psychoacoustic annoyance" [16], similar to the reported laboratory experiments by Schäffer et al [28] and Taghipour et al [8]. The term "short-term" refers to the time period during and after an acoustic stimulus' playback and before the next stimulus is presented [9].…”

Health Effects Related to Wind Turbine Sound, Including Low-Frequency Sound and Infrasound

“…In a listening test among 60 people, after a pilot in 12 people, an association was found by Schäffer et al [70] between road traffic and wind turbine sound level or variations in sound level due to amplitude modulation and annoyance. Attitude towards wind turbines and noise sensitivity were important confounders, and the frequency of the amplitude modulation (higher for the wind turbine sound) seemed to play an important role.…”

“…These are 10 on field studies [36,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69], 7 on experiments [12,[70][71][72][73][74][75], 3 on a prospective cohort study [76][77][78], 1 panel study [79] and 1 qualitative analysis of interviews and discourse [80]. After the systematic literature search, two relevant papers from the most recent International Wind Turbine Noise Conference (Rotterdam 2017) were included [43,81].…”