Exposure-response relationships for road traffic and aircraft noise in Vietnam

It is necessary to assess differences in the community response to noise among countries for the effective implementation of noise policies. However, very little noise annoyance data have been accumulated in countries outside Europe and North America. Toward the establishment of a noise policy in Vietnam and to meet global interest in noise problems in Asia, socio-acoustic surveys on the community response to transportation noise have been carried out in Vietnam since 2005. A total of around 9,900 responses were obtained from these surveys. In this paper, a method of drawing exposure-response curves for noise annoyance in Vietnam is presented. Representative exposure-response relationships are proposed for road traffic and aircraft noise annoyance in Vietnam and compared with those of Europe and Korea. The results show that the aircraft noise annoyance curve for Vietnam was slightly higher than the curve obtained by the EU but considerably lower than that for Korea. Vietnamese respondents were less annoyed by road traffic noise than respondents in Europe and Korea. The frequency of use and the attitude to the benefits to society of motorbikes and airplanes were found to moderate noise annoyance in Vietnamese cities. This study also shows a method to quantify the difference in the prevalence of annoyance measured by five-point verbal and 11-point numerical scales.