Noise from Combined Sources: How Attitudes towards Environment and Sources Influence the Assessment

Noise annoyance judgments depend on multiple factors like environmental area, noise source, characteristic of noises, number of noise events over a day, subjective experience with noises, the social situation. Judging annoyance includes a wide range of variability, which is highly correlated with the variability of living conditions. Since social environment and lifestyle shape up the psychological and social conditions on short as well as long term intervals, it is concluded that the basis for the variability of annoyance reaction to a specific noise event is defined by the subject's social environment and lifestyle. Considering the contextual conditions of noise annoyance judgments is one important procedure regarding the measurement on annoyance towards noise of combined sources. Taking into account the knowledge on annoyance judgments relying on different subjectorientated conditions a measurement is needed, which refer to objective and subjective parameters. The structure of the residential area, the combination of noise sources are for the judgment of annoyance as well important as subjective parameters which are relevant by the people’s point of view, moreover the relationship of both define the background for assessments. On the one hand based on the analysis of interviews concerning with noises from different sources on the other hand with respect to the literature (e.g. Fields et al , 98, Hatfield and Job, 98) a proposal for an approach in noise annoyance measurement will be presented. The aim is to provide data which may deliver an input to modeling the noise annoyance from combined sources.