Abstract:
Dosage-response functions that relate the time-weighted daily average sound power of outdoor noise to the prevalence of a consequential degree of noise-induced annoyance in communities are often viewed as providing a basis for land use compatibility policy recommendations. Although such functions advance understanding of the rate of growth of annoyance with sound level and of related matters, they do not in themselves dictate any particular policy recommendations. It is therefore useful to consider how the growth of noise-induced annoyance is itself related to other nonacoustic measures of community response to noise exposure, such as the rate of growth of neighborhood noisiness judgments with sound level. A probabilistic model of community response to noise exposure developed by Green and Fidell (1991) is shown to provide a good account of a set of neighborhood noisiness judgments. The model is used to relate the growth functions for judgments of neighborhood noisiness and the prevalence of annoyance to one another.