Sensitivity to prospective transportation noise exposure

The Federal Interagency Committee on Noise recommends reliance on a summary relationship developed from retrospective self-reports of annoyance for purposes of assessing community response to future transportation noise. Predictions based upon this relationship are often in substantial error. As noted by Green and Fidell, error in prediction of annoyance prevalence rates from noise exposure may be attributed in part to error of measurement of exposure and in part to failure to systematically treat the influences of response bias. In the case of noise exposure that has not yet occurred, however, poor correlation between annoyance and dosage cannot be attributed to uncertainties of physical measurement. The present study was undertaken to estimate the influence of non-acoustic factors on rates of growth of annoyance under circumstances in which uncertainties of acoustic measurement are irrelevant. The prevalence rates of annoyance associated with prospective increases in noise exposure were found to be under-estimated by FICON (1992) and other summary relationships. This finding suggests that predictions of community response to anticipated changes in environmental noise could be more reliably made if they were not based exclusively on reports of adapted populations of their opinions about familiar circumstances of noise exposure.