Urban green spaces could play a more prominent role than other types of urban open space in providing high quality soundscapes. The main objective of this study was to examine the relationships between people's visit motivation, along with other social/demographical/behavioral as well as visual landscape factors and soundscape experiences in terms of the perceived occurrences and loudness of individual sounds, the preference for individual sounds, as well as overall soundscape preference in urban green spaces. This was based on a questionnaire survey of 400 users in four urban green spaces in Rostock, Germany. The results showed that street traffic sounds were the least preferred, but in a dominating position either in perceived occurrences or loudness, while bird song and water sound were the most preferred sounds. Among the social/demographical/behavioral factors length of stay was the most associated one with soundscape experiences, especially the perception of street traffic sound and bird song. All the five visit motivations were positively related to overall soundscape preference, with "Enjoy a quiet environment" showing the highest correlation coefficient (0.323). "Enjoy the scenery or atmosphere" showed the most significant relationships with perception of individual sounds, with totally 10 different perception parameters. The perception of street traffic sound, motorcycle noise, bird song and water sounds were more associated with visual landscape preference than other kinds of sound. Besides, overall soundscape preference could be affected by visual landscape preference indirectly through the perceived occurrences and loudness of certain sounds. The results suggested that sound sensibility indicated by perceived occurrences of individual sounds was more associated with the examined factors. These findings could be instructive in the soundscape and landscape planning and designing process of urban green spaces.
Previous studies have reported negative impacts of wind parks on the public. These studies considered the noise levels or visual levels separately but not audiovisual interactive factors. This study investigated the audiovisual impact of a new wind park using virtual technology that combined audio and visual features of the environment. Participants were immersed through Google Cardboard in an actual landscape without wind parks (ante operam) and in the same landscape with wind parks (post operam). During the virtual exposure, the reactions of the participants to visual and noise impacts of the wind park were assessed using affective, cognitive, and subjective measures. Participants exhibited significant increases in aural annoyance post operam relative to ante operam. The same result was found in levels of visual annoyance. Aural annoyance and visual annoyance were significantly correlated. However, no direct effects of wind turbines on affective and cognitive measures were found, suggesting wind parks may not have obviously effects on people's objective disturbance. The perceived annoyance was associated with people's attitudes toward the wind parks, but not the sounds of the wind parks. These findings further our understanding of the objective and subjective effects of wind parks on human performance, and allow designers to make scientific decisions during the initial stage of a wind park planning.
The virtual reality of the landscape environment supplies a high level of realism of the real environment, and may improve the public awareness and acceptance of wind park projects. The soundscape around wind parks could have a strong influence on the acceptance and annoyance of wind parks. To explore this VR technology on realism and subjective responses toward different soundscapes of ambient wind parks, three different types of virtual reality on the smartphone tests were performed: aural only, visual only, and aural-visual combined. In total, 21 aural and visual combinations were presented to 40 participants. The aural and visual information used were of near wind park settings and rural spaces. Perceived annoyance levels and realism of the wind park environment were measured. Results indicated that most simulations were rated with relatively strong realism. Perceived realism was strongly correlated with light, color, and vegetation of the simulation. Most wind park landscapes were enthusiastically accepted by the participants. The addition of aural information was found to have a strong impact on whether the participant was annoyed. Furthermore, evaluation of the soundscape on a multidimensional scale revealed the key components influencing the individual's annoyance by wind parks were the factors of "calmness/relaxation" and "naturality/pleasantness". "Diversity" of the soundscape might correlate with perceived realism. Finally, the dynamic aural-visual stimuli using virtual reality technology could improve the environmental assessment of the wind park landscapes, and thus, provide a more comprehensible scientific decision than conventional tools. In addition, this study could improve the participatory planning process for more acceptable wind park landscapes.
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