The concept of noise annoyance: How international experts see it

The first part of this paper is a review of some definitions of noise annoyance which have been used explicitly or implicitly in major field and laboratory studies in different countries. This analysis shows wide differences. For instance, in some cases annoyance is seen as an outcome of disturbances, in other cases it is seen as an indication of the degree of helplessness with respect to the noise source. The second part is a report of an empirical study in which 68 noise research experts from seven different nations were asked (1) to indicate the main effect of noise, and (2) to rate the similarity between the concept "noise annoyance" and several related concepts. It turned out that (1) noise annoyance is seen as the major effect of noise, (2) that noise annoyance is a multi-faceted psychological concept, including behavioral, and evaluative aspects. Also, (3) the two aspects rated highest in similarity to annoyance are "nuisance" and "disturbance", (4) although noise annoyance must be related to acoustic variables, acoustic characteristics do not play an overwhelming role in the concept of annoyance and (5) although experts from different languages agree upon the main components of the annoyance concept (e.g., nuisance, disturbance, and unpleasantness), there are some significant differences in the weights English, German, and Japanese speaking exports assign to several components (e.g., to nuisance: interference, irritation, and vexation). Whether these different weights are due to different concepts of annoyance, or due to different connotations of the related words in the respective languages, could not be analyzed with the data at hand. (C) 1999 Academic Press.