Scaling loudness, noisiness, and annoyance of aircraft noise

Abstract

The capacity of man to differentiate and scale aircraft noise with regard to three psychological attributes frequently encountered in social survey research on ambient noise was tested. Calibrated scales for the attributes evolved from the two-step psychological scaling procedure employed. It was demonstrated that observers in carefully designed laboratory situations are able to use and produce scales of loudness, noisiness, and annoyance for aircraft noise. The relationships between the attributes were satisfactorily described by linear functions. In general, aircraft noise was judged to be more annoying than noisy and more noisy than loud. For all three attributes, the psychophysical relationships were best described by power functions with dB(A)max as the physical measure (exponents 0.21–0.24). Subject Classification: 65.50, 65.75.