title: Short-term annoyance reactions to stationary and time-varying wind turbine and road traffic noise: A laboratory study.
abstract: Current literature suggests that wind turbine noise is more annoying than transportation noise. To date, however, it is not known which acoustic characteristics of wind turbines alone, i.e., without effect modifiers such as visibility, are associated with annoyance. The objective of this study was therefore to investigate and compare the short-term noise annoyance reactions to wind turbines and road traffic in controlled laboratory listening tests. A set of acoustic scenarios was created which, combined with the factorial design of the listening tests, allowed separating the individual associations of three acoustic characteristics with annoyance, namely, source type (wind turbine, road traffic), A-weighted sound pressure level, and amplitude modulation (without, periodic, random). Sixty participants rated their annoyance to the sounds. At the same A-weighted sound pressure level, wind turbine noise was found to be associated with higher annoyance than road traffic noise, particularly with amplitude modulation. The increased annoyance to amplitude modulation of wind turbines is not related to its periodicity, but seems to depend on the modulation frequency range. The study discloses a direct link of different acoustic characteristics to annoyance, yet the generalizability to long-term exposure in the field still needs to be verified.
authors.affiliation: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Acoustics/Noise Control, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Beat
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schäffer
authors.affiliation: Work, Environmental and Health Psychology, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 85072 Eichstätt, Germany.
authors.forename: Sabine J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Schlittmeier
authors.affiliation: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Acoustics/Noise Control, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Reto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pieren
authors.affiliation: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Acoustics/Noise Control, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Heutschi
authors.affiliation: Federal Office for the Environment, Noise and NIR Division, 3003 Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brink
authors.affiliation: Work, Environmental and Health Psychology, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 85072 Eichstätt, Germany.
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Graf
authors.affiliation: Work, Environmental and Health Psychology, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 85072 Eichstätt, Germany.
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hellbrück