EFFECTS OF SITE SELECTED VARIABLES ON HUMAN RESPONSES TO TRAFFIC NOISE, .3. COMMUNITY SIZE BY SOCIOECONOMIC-STATUS BY TRAFFIC NOISE-LEVEL

The results of a field study of human responses to traffic noise were reported. The influence of traffic noise level, community size and socioeconomic status were investigated in a controlled manner determined by subject selection procedures. Human responses were obtained from interviewer-administered questionnaires and were as spatially and temporally coincident with the noise measurements as possible. Noise measurements were obtained from several days of rapidly sampled digital recordings. Traffic noise level was the major predictor of the intensity of elicited responses. A number of other significant effects were observed largely related to community size. These were explained as due to parallel variations in the perceived necessity of vehicles, the annoyance with aircraft noise and the log of the vehicle flow rate. The results demonstrated effects related to community size, and thus it is unwise to extrapolate the results of large city noise studies to small communities and rural areas.