The development of highway nuisance perception

Abstract

The perception of highway nuisance i.e. noises, air pollution and barrier-effects, is associated with negative effects on health and quality of life. This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the development of highway nuisance perception among residents. Interviews were conducted with residents in 32 households living along the Southern Ring Road, a highway which crosses various neighbourhoods in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands.Various themes emerged from the interviews which were important in the development of residents' perceptions of highway nuisance. For example, our interviews showed that residents who had not explicitly chosen to live next to a highway were more acutely affected by the negative externalities of that highway later. Perceived environmental changes, often due to governmental actions such as new/extended noise barriers, removal of trees and newly constructed buildings causing noise reflection, also played a role in the interviewees' development of nuisance perception. In addition, the interviewees indicated that expectations about future highway developments influenced their current perception of highway nuisance: described as anticipation effects. Interviewees also indicated that recent information about the potentially harmful effects of air pollution increased their concerns about living near the highway. A final theme discussed were differences in the extent to which residents were able to develop coping strategies to reduce the amount of highway nuisance perception.The participants' experiences indicate the importance of further integration between the planning of highway infrastructure and the broader environment in order to reduce nuisance perceptions and improve residential quality near highways.

Assessment Methods and Factors Determining Positive Indoor Soundscapes in Residential Buildings: A Systematic Review

“…People living in a greener neighborhood or perceiving it as greener were found to perceive lower noise annoyance. This result was confirmed by other studies [26,30,45,49]. In particular, Li at al.…”

“…No trend towards higher road traffic annoyance with longer residence periods was found by Riedel et al [26]. Interviews by Hamersma et al reported that in several cases the perception of nuisance at home caused by an highway decreased with increased time of residence, as residents got used to it [30]. Differently, Babisch et al found no habituation effect for people who had lived longer in their dwellings, that, on the contrary, showed a stronger increase of annoyance at increasing road traffic noise levels [15].…”

“…Selected studies make use of different study designs, that are laboratory tests [16,[18][19][20][21]24,25,32,34,36,[41][42][43]47] and field campaigns based on socio-acoustic [15,17,22,23,26,28,35,37,39,40,45,46,[48][49][50][51], social surveys [29][30][31]33,38,44], or soundscape assessments [27]. Laboratory studies evaluate testers' response to experimental stimuli in laboratory settings, under controlled conditions.…”

“…Perceptual data have been gathered in the majority of studies through questionnaires, and in two social surveys through interviews [30,31]. Objects of judgments vary from study to study, and are generally intended to investigate the following perceptual categories:…”

Understanding resident satisfaction with involvement in highway planning: in-depth interviews during a highway planning process in the Netherlands

“…To abide by ethical considerations we informed all residents about the general purpose of the study, the research team, the handling of data, and the duration of the interview. We assured them that participation was voluntary, we gave them the option to withdraw from the interview at any time and to read the transcripts afterwards, and we requested that they sign a letter of consent (Hamersma et al 2017). Figure 2 gives an overview of the geographical location of our interviewees, and Table 2 provides their background information.…”