Associations between soundscape experience and self-reported wellbeing in open public urban spaces: a field study

2019

The number of soundscape studies is growing steadily over time and the discipline as a whole is going through a process of methodological standardization. Yet, more empirical evidence is needed about the benefits of experiencing positive soundscapes for health, well-being and quality of life. In this study, a pilot questionnaire was distributed to 50 users of a public open space in London (Granary Square), which consisted of a standardized protocol for collecting soundscape data (ISO 12913-2:2018, Method A), the World Health Organisation-Five Well-Being questionnaire (WHO-5) and a short protocol to assess perceived safety. Results show that associations between negative soundscape dimensions and lower well-being scores exist at a statistically significant level (p < .05) and other further insights into the relationships between sound perception and perceived safety. By making a stronger case for policy makers and planners, these findings contribute to the discourse of approaching...

2016

The Swedish Soundscape-Quality Protocol (SSQP) is a tool developed to evaluate and classify acoustic environments according to their acoustic perception by people. This protocol has been proposed by Axelsson, Nilsson and Berglund and it is based on a pleasantness-eventfulness principal component model. This model is feed by qualitative measurements of the extension of eight attributes of Soundscapes and allows one to classify the acoustic environments in four Cartesian quadrants: exciting, chaotic, monotonous, and calm. In the present work, the SSQP is applied in urban environments in four cities: Córdoba and Rosario (Argentina), Valdivia (Chile) and Lund (Sweden). The protocol was evaluated through 509 surveys conducted in 122 locations corresponding to 29 open public environments in these four cities. The evaluated environments included parks, squares, streets, avenues, pedestrian streets, cultural spaces, fountains and other recreational facilities. Results show that most urban p...

The aim of this paper is to present results in terms of effects on perceived health obtained in a research about soundscape pleasantness. Main conceptual framework has been the Environmental Experience Model and the ISO of Soundscape. This work was undertaken as part of the CITI-SENSE project. 55 people were engaged to provide 153 observations in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz in four urban places. The soundscape was evaluated using a Semantic Differential scale of five points. Results indicated that the principal component of soundscape, named tranquility and pleasantness, is inversely related to perceived stress of people assessing the urban spaces. Other important aspects are the ability of sound environment to be fun, its congruence with the landscape, as well as the natural content of the sounds. This study reinforces the interest of designing urban spaces adapted to the environment characteristics and to the people using them. This can be made facilitating direct participation of...

2020

Soundscape studies aim to consider the holistic human perception of a sound environment, including both the physical phenomena and how these are mediated by internal factors: the mechanisms underpinning the interactions between these two aspects are not well understood. This study aims to assess the influence of psychological well-being and demographic factors including age, gender, occupation status, and education levels on the dimensions of the soundscape circumplex, i.e., Pleasantness and Eventfulness. Data was collected in eleven urban locations in London through a large-scale (N=1134) soundscape survey according to the ISO 12913-2 technical specifications and incorporating the WHO-5 well-being index. Linear mixed-effects modelling applying backwards-step feature selection was used to model the interactions between internal factors including psychological well-being, age, gender, occupation status, education levels and the soundscape Pleasantness and Eventfulness, while accounti...

Soundscape and the Built Environment, 2015

2013

2016

Combining surveys with other methods like observations can offer a more holistic understanding of participants’ experience, with respect to activity and the evaluation of acoustic environments. Reconciling data from multiple methods remains a challenge for soundscape research, even in well-studied park settings. We compare 3 methods (behavioral mapping (n=84), questionnaires (n=41), sound recordings) to research the interaction between park users and their soundscapes over 4 sessions in the summertime. We collected soundscape ratings (SSQP, restorativeness, appropriateness) and free-format verbal descriptions, together with demographics, activity data, and personality measures. Annotated sound recordings for each observation session were compared against source and activity descriptions and free format verbal descriptors were classified into emerging themes. Within categories of sound sources, we observed different valences (e.g. within bird sounds, ducks were positive, seagulls neg...

Noise Mapping, 2016

The overall aim of this research was to find a group of easy-to-access variables, that are measurable or assessable, and which help predict acoustic comfort in urban places, in order to make further progress in developing a soundscape indicator based on indices readily available in urban environments. Our main conceptual framework has been the Environmental Experience Model and the ISO of Soundscape, together with the most up-to-date information and technology, where parameters that influence the soundscape and comfort in urban public places have been identified. This work has been undertaken as part of the CITI-SENSE project. A viable technical and procedural solutionwas designed and tested in a field demonstration, where 53 people were engaged to provide 120 observations in the city ofVitoria-Gasteiz, using environmental sensors connected to a smartphone. The results were analysed and are discussed here with the aim of defining an indicator that permits an easy evaluation of acous...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2019

The capacity of natural settings to promote psychological restoration has attracted increasing research attention, especially with regards to the visual dimension. However, there is a need to extend these studies to urban settings, such as squares, parks or gardens, due to the global trend towards urbanisation, and to integrate the dimension of sound into landscape. Such was the main aim of this study, in which 53 participants assessed four public spaces in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) as part of the CITI-SENSE Project (137 observations were used for analysis). A smartphone application was used to simultaneously collect objective and subjective data. The results show that at the end of the urban environmental experience, there was a statistically significant reduction in negative emotions and perceived stress, and a slight increase in positive emotions. Emotional restoration was mainly associated with prior emotional states, but also with global environmental comfort and acoustic comfort...

Background. Wellbeing issues are increasingly incorporated within conservation biology and environmental sciences, both in academic research and in applied policies such as the global sustainable development plans. The role of landscape on human wellbeing has been widely reported, but a comprehensive understanding of the role of soundscape has yet to be explicated. Research on the influences of sound on wellbeing has been conducted across a range of disciplines, but integration of findings is impeded by linguistic and cultural differences across disciplinary boundaries. This study presents the largest systematic literature review (2499 publications) of research to date, addressing the association between soundscape and human/ecological wellbeing. Method. It is divided in two components: 1. rapid visualisation of publication metrics using the software VOS Viewer, and 2. analysis of the categories of wellbeing associated with soundscape using the natural language processing platform, ...