Effects of social, demographical and behavioral factors on the sound level evaluation in urban open spaces

The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of social, demographical and behavioral factors as well as long-term sound experience on the subjective evaluation of sound level in urban open public spaces. This is based on a series of large scale surveys in 19 urban open spaces in Europe and China. The results suggest that the effects of social/demographical factors, including age, gender, occupation, education and residential status, on the sound level evaluation are generally insignificant, although occupation and education are two related factors and both correlate to the sound level evaluation more than other factors. The effects of some behavioral factors, including wearing earphones, reading/writing and moving activities, are also insignificant on the sound level evaluation, but the watching behavior is highly related to the sound level evaluation. Compared to the social, demographical and behavioral factors, the long-term sound experience, i.e. the acoustic environment at home, significantly affect the sound level evaluation in urban open spaces. It is important to note that between the social/demographical factors, there are generally significant correlations, although the correlation coefficients may not be high. It is also noted that there are considerable variations between different urban open spaces.