Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the
European Acoustics Association
Forum Acusticum 2023


Politecnico di Torino
Torino, Italy
September 11 - 15, 2023





Session: A08-02: Subjective evaluation of environmental noise included audio-visual interactions - Part II
Date: Thursday 14 September 2023
Time: 11:00 - 11:20
Title: Noise annoyance reduction by green window view : The effect of green quality
Author(s): T. Van Renterghem, Ghent University, Technologiepark 126, 9052 Zwijnaarde-Gent, Belgium
M. Lauwereys, Ghent University, Technologiepark 126, 9052 Zwijnaarde-Gent, Belgium
Pages: 4295-4298
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.61782/fa.2023.0376
PDF: https://dael.euracoustics.org/confs/fa2023/data/articles/000376.pdf
Conference proceedings
Abstract

There is convincing real-life evidence that seeing outdoor vegetation through the windows of one’s dwelling is able to mitigate negative health effects due to exposure to environmental noise, in particular for noise annoyance. However, design guidelines to maximally benefit from this positive audio-visual interaction are currently lacking, but are mandatory when this idea is to be brought to the urban sound planning arena. In a previous virtual reality experiment, it was found that the optimum ”RGB greenness” in the window pane of a dwelling is near 30%. In this follow-up study, vegetation quantity was fixed near this optimum, but green quality varied, on the dimensions biodiversity, colorfulness, and maintenance degree. Similar to the green quantity study, a living room was mimicked overlooking a vegetated central reservation along an inner city ring road at high noise exposure levels. Preliminary analysis showed that higher colorfulness and biodiversity of the green belt not only increased the aesthetic quality perceived by the participants, but also tended to reduce the self-reported noise annoyance.