Annoyance

About: Annoyance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2015 publications have been published within this topic receiving 38300 citations. The topic is also known as: annoy.

Windmill Noise Annoyance, Visual Aesthetics, and Attitudes towards Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract: A small focused socio-acoustic after-study of annoyance from a windmill park was undertaken after local health officials demanded a health impact study to look into neighborhood complaints. The windmill park consists of 31 turbines and is located in the South of Norway where it affects 179 dwellings. Simple exposure-effect relationships indicate stronger reactions to windmills and wind turbine noise than shown internationally, with the caveat that the sample size is small (n = 90) and responses are colored by the existing local conflict. Pulsating swishing sounds and turbine engine hum are the main causes of noise annoyance. About 60 per cent of those who participated in the survey were of the opinion that windmills degrade the landscape aesthetically, and were far from convinced that land-based windmills are desirable as a renewable energy source (hydropower is an important alternative source of renewables in Norway). Attitudes play an important role in addition to visual aesthetics in determining the acceptance of windmills and the resulting noise annoyance. To compare results from different wind turbine noise studies it seems necessary to assess the impact of important modifying factors.

Comparing the Effects of Road, Railway, and Aircraft Noise on Sleep: Exposure–Response Relationships from Pooled Data of Three Laboratory Studies

Abstract: Objectives: Air, road, and railway traffic, the three major sources of traffic noise, have been reported to differently impact on annoyance. However, these findings may not be transferable to physiological reactions during sleep which are considered to decrease nighttime recovery and might mediate long-term negative health effects. Studies on awakenings from sleep indicate that railway noise, while having the least impact on annoyance, may have the most disturbing properties on sleep compared to aircraft noise. This study presents a comparison between the three major traffic modes and their probability to cause awakenings. In combining acoustical and polysomnographical data from three laboratory studies sample size and generalizability of the findings were increased. Methods: Data from three laboratory studies were pooled, conducted at two sites in Germany (German Aerospace Center, Cologne, and Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund). In total, the impact of 109,836 noise events on polysomnographically assessed awakenings was analyzed in 237 subjects using a random intercept logistic regression model. Results: The best model fit according to the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) included different acoustical and sleep parameters. After adjusting for these moderators results showed that the probability to wake up from equal maximum A-weighted sound pressure levels (SPL) increased in the order aircraft < road < railway noise, the awakening probability from road and railway noise being not significantly different (p = 0.988). At 70 dB SPL, it was more than 7% less probable to wake up due to aircraft noise than due to railway noise. Conclusions: The three major traffic noise sources differ in their impact on sleep. The order with which their impact increased was inversed compared to the order that was found in annoyance surveys. It is thus important to choose the correct concept for noise legislation, i.e., physiological sleep metrics in addition to noise annoyance for nighttime noise protection.

Joint models for noise annoyance and willingness to pay for road noise reduction

Abstract: Recent contingent valuation (CV) studies of the willingness to pay (WTP) for road noise reduction have used stated annoyance as an independent variable. We argue that this may be inappropriate due to potential endogeneity bias. Instead, an alternative model is proposed that treats both WTP and annoyance as endogenous variables in a simultaneous equation model as a combination of a linear regression with an ordered probit with correlated error terms and possibly common parameters. Thus, information on stated annoyance is utilised to estimate WTP with increased efficiency. Application of the model to a dataset from Copenhagen indicates a potential for improving the precision of the estimate of WTP for noise reduction with CV data.

Environmental odours and somatic complaints

Abstract: Two field studies in two cities in Northrhine-Westfalia were carried out in order to characterize the degree of association between environmental odour-exposure, annoyance, and somatic symptoms. In both studies, odour effects were assessed through personal interviews by means of standardised questionnaires. In the first study, the odour source was a fertilizer plant for mushroom cultivation with particularly offensive odour emissions. The distance from the source was taken to characterize the intensity of odour exposure. 250 subjects were interviewed at close, medium or remote distance from the plant. Apart from an extremely high degree of annoyance, an increasing frequency of somatic symptoms was found with increasing proximity to the odour source. Somatic symptoms were directly linked to odour exposure and additionally mediated by annoyance. In the second study (n = 322), the odour source was a pig rearing facility, and the degree of odour exposure was assessed by measuring the frequency of odour-events by means of systematic field observations. Results showed that the degree of odour-annoyance as well as the frequency of somatic symptoms increased significantly with increasing odour-exposure, although their frequency was reduced relative to the first study, and mediated by annoyance. In both studies, perceived negative health was associated with increased symptom reports, however, results for old age were inconsistent. Response tendencies and biases were controlled. Environmental odours have been shown to be associated with somatic symptoms and, may, thus, be considered as a risk factor for health and wellbeing of exposed populations, especially for vulnerable subjects with perceived negative health.