A principal components model of soundscape perception.
There is a need for a model that identifies underlying dimensions of soundscape perception, and which may guide measurement and improvement of soundscape quality. With the purpose to develop such a model, a listening experiment was conducted. One hundred listeners measured 50 excerpts of binaural recordings of urban outdoor soundscapes on 116 attribute scales. The average attribute scale values were subjected to principal components analysis, resulting in three components: Pleasantness, eventfulness, and familiarity, explaining 50, 18 and 6% of the total variance, respectively. The principal-component scores were correlated with physical soundscape properties, including categories of dominant sounds and acoustic variables. Soundscape excerpts dominated by technological sounds were found to be unpleasant, whereas soundscape excerpts dominated by natural sounds were pleasant, and soundscape excerpts dominated by human sounds were eventful. These relationships remained after controlling for the overall soundscape loudness (Zwicker's N(10)), which shows that 'informational' properties are substantial contributors to the perception of soundscape. The proposed principal components model provides a framework for future soundscape research and practice. In particular, it suggests which basic dimensions are necessary to measure, how to measure them by a defined set of attribute scales, and how to promote high-quality soundscapes.
Gösta Ekman Laboratory, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Östen
Ö
Axelsson
Mats E
ME
Nilsson
Birgitta
B
Berglund
D000162:Acoustics; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D002958:City Planning; D004777:Environment; D005160:Facility Design and Construction; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D055815:Young Adult