The relation between objective and subjective exposure to traffic noise around two suburban highway viaducts in Ghent: lessons for urban environmental policy

ABSTRACT

A growing empirical evidence base identifies environmental noise exposure as an important health problem. While the health effects depend for a great part on personal noise sensitivity and contextual factors, in environmental policy, generic noise standards and procedures based on objective sound levels are used. In this article, the relation between objective and subjective noise exposure variables is further explored by carrying out a residents’ survey in a highly noise polluted area along two highways south of the city centre of Ghent, Belgium. The survey results show only a weak correlation between objective and subjective exposure variables, with both variables demonstrating different associations with the respondents’ background characteristics. While lower-educated and lower-income people are generally higher exposed according to the models, they do not report a higher subjective exposure. People who have been living longer in the area are not necessarily higher exposed according to the models but do report a higher subjective exposure. Most strikingly, owners of a comfortable detached house report a higher subjective exposure than renters of an apartment or small house, while the latter group is significantly higher exposed according to the models. The results support a plea for the joint evaluation of both objective and subjective noise exposure variables in environmental policy and environmental assessments. In addition, the results argue for specific attention for noise exposure of socio-economically vulnerable people and the establishment of a shared knowledge base on noise exposure with both objective and subjective information.

KEYWORDS:

• Traffic noise
• noise exposure
• noise annoyance
• environmental policy

Acknowledgements

The research was carried out at the Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning at Ghent University, as part of a doctoral research project. The research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. The author wishes to acknowledge the City of Ghent and the Belgian Interregional Environment Agency (IRCEL - CELINE) for providing the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Thomas Verbeek http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4669-2685

Notes

1 Day–evening equivalent sound level, measured over the 16-hour period 07.00–23.00 hours.

2 A-weighted decibels, expresses the relative loudness of sounds in air as perceived by the human ear.

3 Night equivalent sound level, measured over the 8-hour period 23.00–07.00 hours.

4 The average equivalent sound level over a 24-hour period, with a 5 dB(A) penalty added for noise during the evening hours of 19:00–23:00 and a 10 dB(A) penalty for noise during the night-time hours of 23:00–07:00.

5 The city of Ghent counts 201 statistical sectors, which have been defined by sociological and spatial characteristics, with an average population of about 1200 respondents. It is the most detailed level for which census data are available.

6 While technically also industry noise is included in the noise maps, in the case area, almost no industrial plants are located. The noise maps thus largely represent road and railway noise.

7 While housing typology is in itself not an ordinal variable, it was considered ordinal to allow for more profound analysis. With some caution, the variable represents a continuum from urban to rural housing typologies.